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African Mothers
1. Dogon, Mali. by Frans Devriese
2. Pays Agni, Ivory Coast. by Olivier Martel
3. Karima, Sudan. by Nihal Abdellatif
4. Togo. by Luca Gargano
5. Madagascar. by Steve Evans
6. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. by Jemal Countess
7. Maputo, Mozambique. by Douglas Condzo
8. Uganda. by Akosua Manuela
9. Loiyangani, Kenya. by Brian Msafiri
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When we say that Ada Lovelace was arguably the world’s first computer programmer, that “arguably” isn’t thrown in there because of questions of definitions or precedence – she definitely wrote programs for a computer, and she was definitely the first.
Rather, the reason her status as the world’s first computer programmer is arguable is because during her lifetime, computers did not exist.
Yes, really: her code was intended for Charles Babbage’s difference engine, but Babbage was never able to build a working model – the material science of their time simply wasn’t up to the challenge. Lovelace’s work was thus based on a description of how the difference engine would operate.
Like, imagine being so far ahead of your time that you’re able to identify and solve fundamental problems of computer programming based on a description of the purely hypothetical device that would run the code you’re writing.
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A man was asked how he managed to pray all 5 prayers?
He replied saying: I became certain that no one could stand meeting me 5 times a day, no matter what state I was in - happy, sad, lonely, angry - except the most loving and most merciful الله swt
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Set a goal for the day
Create a todo list
Create rules for yourself
Keep a note to write things that interrupt you
Remember
Expanded perspective
You are away from distractions of co-workers, you are less likely to be called into an impromptu meeting or engage in an interesting conversation about your favorite sports team. You are making up extra hours by saving up on the commute time. So, these arguments are promising enough to make working from home productive. In this post, we will look at some of the tips to make working from home productive and enjoyable.
Start with a plan
Create a daily goal. Have a clear and simple goal for the day, be it focusing on one important client project or making progress on your personal project. This will help you set a clear intent for the day. Even if some random plans come in the way, you will have clarity over accepting or denying it and your choice will be solely driven by your goal for the day.
Create priorities and make sure that you are focused on your goal for the day. If your goal for the day is to make progress on your personal project, you can set priorities like, getting clarity on the name of the project or making a list of people who can help you make your project successful
This is almost like setting a theme for your day and the earlier you do it, the more control you will start to feel about your day. Everything you do today revolves around your goal for the day. So even at the end of the day, if you are unproductive, you know what one thing you can do to get closer to that goal.
Block your calendar or structure your day
Once you have a plan in place, block time in your calendar and if you are not a calendar person, just create a simple todo list. The todo list will help you stay on track and keep it simple, you don’t need to have a sophisticated system. You can use an app like Todoist (which is one of my favorites) to manage tasks or you can go with a sheet of paper. Make sure that your todo list is driven by your priorities for the day.
Having these three layers of goals, priorities, and tasks will help you break things down to specifics. Your tasks will be actionable and doable chunks of your priorities. And your priorities will be the breakdown of your goal.
The important thing is to create a structure for your day. Having a clear structure will help reduce decision making while starting work and you will limit your brain from getting distracted. You can also keep the distractions away by making them difficult to access. You can use something like the 20-second rule to limit distractions.
Force yourself if you need to (you will need to)
It is highly likely that you will struggle to focus at times. It is perfectly fine (and normal) to get distracted, the important part is to get back on track. You can get sucked into distractions and feel that you are not good at focusing on work at home or you can mindfully start with work as soon as you find yourself distracted.
You will end up being more productive working from home if you choose the latter. The most conflicting part of focusing is, we don’t let ourselves focus. We don’t let ourselves work on a single task for long stretches of time, which is very important to getting work done productively.
You can try the Pomodoro technique to force yourself to sit in one place for a particular amount of time and focus on one task. It is simple and straight forward, just follow these steps:
Pick a task.
Set 25 minutes (you can choose the time duration) timer.
Work on the task you picked and don’t stop until the timer goes off.
One simple thing you can try is keeping a notebook or a sheet of paper or a sticky note right in front of you. As soon as you feel distracted and an urge to do something else, just write it down and keep it for later. By doing this, you will not interrupt what you are currently working on and you can come back to that list later to get those small things done.
Create rules and follow them
Working from home needs some self-discipline and being disciplined can be a very vague term to start with. You can try to be disciplined but that won’t matter until you have certain rules to be disciplined about.
It is very difficult to get back on track after you are distracted by something, be it watching a series or a call from a friend. Set a few guidelines for yourself and have them in a place where you can refer to them easily. For eg., your rules for the weekdays can look something like this
Cannot watch more than 1 episode of any TV series
No social media between 10 am to 8 pm
Write something in the morning for at least 30 mins
And so on…
You don’t have to strictly follow them every single day and stick with all of them even when you are not feeling good. Just make sure most days are within these rules and a few off days are fine.
Set a start and stop time
Working from home needs some self-discipline and being disciplined can be a very vague term to start with. You can try to be disciplined but that won’t matter until you have certain rules to be disciplined about.
It is very difficult to get back on track after you are distracted by something, be it watching a series or a call from a friend. Set a few guidelines for yourself and have them in a place where you can refer to them easily. For eg., your rules for the weekdays can look something like this
Cannot watch more than 1 episode of any TV series
No social media between 10 am to 8 pm
Write something in the morning for at least 30 mins
And so on…
You don’t have to strictly follow them every single day and stick with all of them even when you are not feeling good. Just make sure most days are within these rules and a few off days are fine.
Take away
Working from home does come with its own challenges, but with just a little bit of self-discipline and planning, it can be highly productive. You don’t have to get a lot of things done to be productive while working from home, you just need to make sure you are doing the right things at the right time.
The post Working from home sounds very attractive, but it does carry with it its own challenges. If you are not completely prepared to work from home, things can become highly unproductive and full of distractions. It is all about creating a balance between flexibility and structure. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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Use wellbeing features on your phone
Ask yourself, why you want to use the phone?
Remember
Expanded perspective
As humans, it is very difficult for us to not do anything at all. Even the tasks that don’t require much of our mental energy like eating or standing in line waiting for the coffee we ordered put us in a zone of uncomfortable emptiness.
We live in an age where we are almost, every time connected to information which is just a few taps away. This connectivity makes it difficult to resist the temptation to check in on what is happening on the other side of the world. Even though we might not really care about it, but it is more interesting than waiting and doing nothing.
Checking your phone quickly is an instant fix for filling in for the boredom you are facing at the moment, but one should get used to it. Boredom could be good – it could inspire new ideas and help you clear out of your head the worrying thoughts that are left unaddressed. There are a lot of things that you can observe in your surroundings and can learn from.
You are missing out on observing beautiful moments.
What are you missing out on?
While you are waiting on the line and checking your phone you are missing out on the kid across the hall sharing her burger with a cat. There are so many small moments happening around us that we don’t even pay attention to and they are just missed. Observing these moments might not seem very important, but observing these small details around us helps us learn new things about being social.
We are social beings and we learn by observing others. Paying attention to small moments around you might help you understand certain emotions and feelings. While observing others is fine, but don’t overdo it to an extent that it becomes creepy.
Paying attention to the things happening around you might also open opportunities to connect with new people or help someone in need. If you keep yourself busy with your phone, you are missing out on these connections in your physical surroundings.
Setting an intention
Talk to yourself and decide what is the purpose of using a phone. Are you using your phone to connect with your family and friends or is it your productivity device or it is all about work for you? I am not saying that you have to use the phone for just one purpose, but instead knowing the purpose of the tool prevents you from misusing it or overusing it when not needed.
Set an intention and make sure you are limiting your usage. If you haven’t already spent some time to organize the apps on your phone, take some time out and move all the apps you use to your home screen. Once you have all the frequently used apps in one place, make a call, do you need every single app here? If the answer is NO, try clearing it up by moving some of the apps out of the home screen. This is a good time to move the apps you want to use often, but haven’t been using enough to the home screen. If you still have too many apps, move some of the apps into folders, the apps which are not high on priority.
You don’t have to stick to this for long, you can always play around with rearranging, removing and adding apps when needed. It will help you be mindful of the usage of your phone and also keep a check on the apps you are using too much.
Monitoring your usage
You can use some of the built-in apps or any third-party app to monitor your daily or weekly usage. Once you have a report for a few weeks or days you can have a look and decide what you can cut down and save some hours in your day.
You can also play around with setting usage limits for certain apps that are taking up a lot of your time. The important thing is to use this data to stay intentional about your usage of the phone.
The data might surprise you and things might seem difficult to control. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to limit your usage, but it is not difficult and with limited usage, you will be able to add some extra hours to your day.
Take away
A phone is a tool and it should be used as one, which means you should be using it when you need it. Our impulsive desire to keep our mind occupied pulls us into undesirable patterns which can hamper our overall well-being. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t take control of the usage of our phone.
Having control over the usage of your phone will ensure that you start valuing your time and there will be plenty of time that you can allot for doing other things. Being mindful is easy and it starts with being intentional about the usage of the tools you have.
The post While you are using your phone out of habit, you are missing out on a lot of small details around you. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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Create an action plan
Start with a small project
Offer your help to someone
Using what you know sounds easy but it is not that obvious. More often than not we focus on absorbing knowledge without timely application and that can make things a little trickier to start with. Here are some things that you can happen and affect your wellbeing.
Overwhelm
You have a lot of dreams to follow, but somehow you feel there is a lot to learn. Learning will prepare you for the unknown and you will be able to face the challenges more effectively.
You have a lot of things to do and putting in the time to learn all those things that you need to learn seems tricky, and at times, frustrating. There are days when you plan things out, set goals and schedule all things. Things go fine for a few days but after a while, you find yourself again struggling to keep up with all the goals.
If you will not be able to get time to learn new things, how will you grow?
Discouragement
When things don’t go according to plans, discouragement and disappointment are common. You cannot avoid this feeling of not being able to keep up with things.
When things go wrong, most of the time you know what went wrong. If you are not able to figure out what went wrong, that means you are not planning well. In that case, you will not be discouraged, because you didn’t anticipate the things that will go right to make the plan a success.
If everything in life could be predicted and happened according to plans, life would be so boring.
High fear
You know enough to understand the risks so that adds a fear of failure. You are more cautious about taking risks and moving forward with execution. The paranoia of failure can lead to over planning and delaying the execution to a point where it becomes too late to start.
Finding the right balance between knowledge and execution is very vital to make progress.
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Even if you feel something might not work out, but it is something that you always wanted to do, at least give it a try.
The backlog moves with time
You want to apply what you have learned, but with the fear of failure you are not taking action. This keeps building a backlog of all the things that you want to do to become what you want to be.
As time moves on and your knowledge expands, you will always have one more thing to do, one more thing to try out and in the end, you will have too many things to do and too little time to act.
Expanding knowledge is about connecting the dots. The way you stitch together different things you know and then apply those things to take action will define who you become.
Regret
You will always regret what you didn’t do and failing after trying will make sure that your assumption about failure was correct. In the end, it’s a win-win, but if you don’t try you will always miss out on that slim chance of success.
If you were unaware of the knowledge and potential you can attain, you will have less regret, but when you know what you can or what you could have achieved, you will live with regret.
Take away
Knowledge is one of the most powerful tools or asset one can have, but using it is what defines your success in life. You will always know enough to make a difference and less to know everything. Just start with what you always wanted to and the knowledge always will increase.
The post Sometimes we just keep absorbing information and growing our knowledge without taking any action towards our dreams. And this can be mentally taxing and a blocker to our success. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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Focus on what you can do in the next hour
Be mindful of the choices you are making in the day
We drive through our days with a sense that a lot happens based on how the day is. If we have a good day, we planned it well, but if we are having a bad day, we rephrase the statement to “it’s a bad day.” We put too much wait on the day and blame it when things are not going well and that gives us the sense that we don’t control our days.
You have a choice
You are about to go out of the house and it starts raining. While you can’t do much about the rain but you still have a few choices. You can choose to take an umbrella and still go out or you can choose to stay at home.
No matter what situation you are in because of the events in a day, you will always have a choice. These are the choices that give you control of your day and make it good or bad for you. Your choices in those uncomfortable situations are what will define how good the day will be for you.
Although this doesn’t always guaranty a good day, good days will be more often and more importantly, you will have a sense of control over your days. Life is unpredictable and there will be events that will not have choices to offer.
If you don’t have a choice or control over an event there is no point in overthinking about it. Having a choice and not having one is the indicator of whether you should focus on something or not.
Not making most of the day
A good day and a bad day is more about perspective. There will be days when you will find yourself not feeling like working. So, one of the first things is to be aware of it, that you are not making the most out of the day.
I will not refer to it as a bad day but rather a day you are not fully utilizing. And just one action can turn that day into something meaningful. Even if you have like 10 minutes remaining in the day, you can still take action to think about something that you can do tomorrow, to make tomorrow meaningful and learn from today.
Just a few steps
More often than not you have control over your day. The best way to make a day good, is just about 3 steps:
First – realizing that you are not making most of the day
Second – Deciding on something that you can do in the next hour to make the day meaningful, don’t think about the long term, just the next hour, or just the next 15 minutes
Third – Once you have decided what you want to do, just start. Don’t think about anything, just get started.
We usually resist a lot when we must start with something. We start building up stories in our minds and all sorts of excuses to do it later. It is that uncertainty or mundaneness of the task that gives us that uncomfortable feeling and we start resisting.
You anyways have to do that task, if not now, later. You should stop overthinking and start working on the task.
Keep the momentum going
We are all about momentum, once we start, we can go on and on. It sounds very simple and that is what it is. You will just have those 10 minutes of friction and discomfort when to start. After that, once you are in the flow, your mood for the day will dramatically shift.
Once you have started, just stick to it for a while and I can assure you, you will be surprised by what you will be able to accomplish, despite feeling like not doing anything.
The post The difference between a good day and a bad day can be just a 2 minutes action or a small choice you make in the day. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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Visualize your morning
Stay in bed for some time
Don’t think, just wake up when the alarm rings
You are trying to wake up early in the morning, but even those annoying alarms are not working. You have read a lot of things about waking up early and watched a lot of videos of people sharing their morning routines and rituals. Everything seems so awesome. The only problem is you are not able to follow through on these plans that you are making for yourself or not even able to start.
Let’s try and simplify things.
Don’t overthink it
There is so much information about waking up early and so many rituals and routines to follow that can complicate the process. The point is, don’t pressurize yourself to stick to any or many of them, just because it works for someone, doesn’t mean it will work for you. When you read or watch someone’s morning ritual, absorb it for inspiration and not to follow as it is.
Here are a few things you can try:
Absorb the article or video about morning routine and ritual
Create a list and notes of the steps that were mentioned
Keep adding to this list as you consume more content
Highlight the points that you think can work for you
Pick any 1 or at most 2 out of them
Start applying from the next morning
If you find yourself struggling to follow along with the plan, you still have other items on the list that you can swap with the existing selection.
Remember, the goal is not to overthink on create a perfect routine or ritual for the morning, but some steps that work for you and help you wake up early.
You might start feeling bad about your day
When you set standards for yourself by seeing or reading about other people’s morning habits, you are pushing yourself. It might work for some, but not all. If it is not working for you, don’t stress too much about it. Most of the time we start setting unrealistic expectations for us.
We somehow don’t pay attention to the fact that habits don’t form overnight or just by deciding on them. Even the people whom you are looking up to didn’t form these morning habits in one day.
If you push yourself too hard, you will start developing the feeling that you are not starting the day well. Once that happens, your point of focus for the entire day is on the regret of not waking up early. With this, you start wasting your energy on regret instead of making most of the day.
Don’t focus too much on waking up early, even if you are not able to wake up early, keep it behind you and utilize the remaining hours of the day and try again tomorrow.
Visualize the morning
Don’t plan too far ahead about the morning, just think of the first thing that you want to do. For me, this is how it works, “sit on the bed when the alarm rings, close the alarm and open DoRemember to write what I am looking forward to today.” Just this series of steps activate me and makes me ready for the day.
By this time, I have a good idea about what I am looking forward to in the day, so the next step is planning by day and prioritizing my tasks. After this, I read a book and keep myself away from any news or social media. This makes sure I am not starting the day distracted and I am not getting into a distracted mindset for the rest of the day.
You can stay in bed
You don’t have to jump out of the bed straight away. It is ok to stay in bed and do something productive while sitting inside your blanket. If you are not the person who can easily jump out of bed, it is fine, find something to do in bed and prepare the night before. If you want to read in the morning, keep the book next to you.
You might have to get off the bed to turn on the light if the switch is not accessible from the bed, or you can get a table lamp right next to your bed. But this is up to you, you can get creative with comfort and reduce friction so that you are not making excuses in the morning and sticking to the plan.
You can try reading this 20-second rule to learn more about the resistance to getting things done.
You can’t wake up early if you stay up late in the night
Don’t force your body to wake up early if you are not able to get proper sleep at night. You have to sleep early in order to wake up early.
You don’t have to wake up at 4 or 5, even waking up around 6 or 7 is early enough, but make sure you are sleeping based on when you want to wake.
Forcing yourself to wake up early when you are sleeping late, can only take you as far as a few days of productive feeling. After the early days, you will start feeling low on energy throughout the day.
Take away
The important thing to wake up early is to not overthink the process and put too much pressure on yourself. Things are still fine and you are able to get things done throughout the day. It is just that you want to extract more out of the day. If you keep trying and are not too hard on yourself you will be able to get into the habit of waking up early. Start simple and gradually make it sophisticated step by step.
The post If you are considering or trying to wake up early in the morning, you already know the benefits. Waking up early is not that complicated than you think, do don’t overthink it. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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List down your priorities
Pick one priority and work on it every day
Remember
Expanded perspective
No matter how much we try to stick to properly planning our day and getting most things done, there is still this feeling that we are wasting time. If you are feeling the same, you are not alone, most of us do. It has more to do with how we look at time and our priorities. Instead of time conspiring against us, the feeling has more to do with unmanaged priorities.
You have plans
You have plans for the day. By the end of the day, you are not able to get things done according to those plans. Now you don’t have much time left in the day and not enough energy to make yourself do anything at all, so you just end up watching something or doing something random and sleeping.
We all are guilty of planning and not keeping up with the plans. While planning and following through is really one of the best things you can do, but it is not an absolute essential. You can still get things done without much planning.
Even if you don’t have a properly planned day, you will still be able to get things done. Well, this is a counterproductive statement, “NOT HAVING A PLAN”, but the point is, you don’t have to feel too much pressure, if you don’t have a plan for the day, it is fine. Just to clarify, this doesn’t mean that you should not be planning your day. Plan your day, but if you find yourself in these thoughts about wasting time, skip planning for a few days in between.
Plans are rough
Plans are just “Plans”, they are just a rough outline of things, so don’t over plan. Don’t measure whatever you are doing by time.
Set some priorities and a clear set of tasks for yourself and get them done. Stop worrying too much about how much time you should be putting into your tasks or if you are giving them less time or you are completely wasting time.
Time is a finite resource and you will not be able to make up for time, but you don’t have to worry too much about utilizing all the time you have.
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Even 15 mins in a day towards your dream project is a good utilization of time when the rest of your day is spent on tasks that are helping to earn money.
Wasting time
It will be difficult to keep track of what you are doing and how long it will take or is it going to finish at all or not. Although planning doesn’t guarantee success, it is still better to plan and follow through something. Having clarity about the next steps is important to stop you from falling into the habit of wasting time. Therefore, having things planned is helpful. You are reducing decision making when you are about to start something and it will help you reduce the amount of procrastination.
As soon as you find yourself off the plan there is this feeling that starts building up, telling you that you are wasting your time. While there is a lot of truth in that, but you don’t have to go down the rabbit hole and start worrying about it too much. It is ok to not follow through plans at times if you will come back to it later. If you don’t, you will start feeling worse about wasting time.
What matters to you?
If a relationship with a friend is important to you and she or he needs you in this phase of their life, that is time well spent.
Don’t manage time, manage the important things, and put time on them.
You don’t have to worry about how many hours you have in a day, worry about the things that you want to do in your day, and just do them. Don’t overthink that you need to put this many number of hours to consider it not wasting time.
It all adds up, even if you have just 5 minutes left in the day, just utilize that time, and you will have the first 5 minutes of the next day and if you still want to continue, you have 1435 minutes still left in the day.
Time is a concept that we have created, so make it work for you, don’t work for it.
The post If you are feeling that you are wasting time, it is the right time to organize priorities, not time management. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.
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