Hello all!
This is ImaB here and I am back with another blog to share some ideas with you guys that I am personally giving a shot! If you have read my previous blog “Imab- Talking #1” then you know that I working on transforming myself. Becoming someone better and pushing myself to accomplish more than I ever thought I could. Today, I will share with you a rough draft for a daily routine of things that I am trying to begin doing in my life in the efforts of becoming more productive. Since, I think this list could be helpful for myself, I am creating a blog about it and sharing with you all my thoughts on what I could do to be more productive. I will try to make this list in a “full circle” method which starts with morning routines and ends with night routines. I will also write this in an inclusive method that includes not only myself, but those of you who wish to give this a try with me! So, let’s get started!
Firstly, in the morning we all obviously do the same thing... We wake up, but personally this is where things set the tone for the rest of the day. Typically, most mornings, I will wake before my alarm, and I will lay there... This leads me to loft in and out of a slumber state, where I am still awake, but not quite functional. This in turn leads me to hit snooze when the alarm finally does go off. This causes me to get a very slow start and this slow sluggish feeling follows me throughout the day.
Now, on the other hand, on the days that I jump up out of bed immediately, I am fully alert after just a few moments and the alertness and focus follows me around all day!! I tend to feel much better physically and definitely more positive! It is a better lifestyle no doubt! Where this goes wrong is when I convince myself, during the first moment that I wake up, that it is more comfortable to just continue sleeping for another minute. This is one of the BIGGEST LIES that I could ever tell myself. So jumping out of bed immediately when waking up is my first primary focus to improve on!
So, back on point, we have woken up and we have jumped out the bed. What’s next? If you are like me, even on the days that I jump out of bed, I am still in a tired “just woke up” state of mind! If I had hair, p.s. I am bald... check out my beautiful Instagram photos (sarcasm skills at work here), it would look all disastrous and un-kept giving off an obvious “I am not a morning person” vibe. How do I kick myself into gear removing the “Sleeping Monster” from off of my back? I stretch and shake the crap out of myself, removing that overstayed creature from my day! A simple stretch, where I through my arms up as far as I can and bend backwards, which allows me to open up a bit, and then I apply a shake of my limbs as I bring my arms down, which enforces this notion that I am awake, let’s do this! If I could do this every morning, I know life would be better!
Okay, so we have woken up, we have jumped out of bed, and we have kicked the sleeping monster’s butt! The next thing personally, imab real, is the bath room and with this new way of thinking, no phones included. Just me and the bathroom... This is out of the way. Next up, let’s mediate and pray, if this is your thing I highly recommend it! When mediating and praying, lets thing of as many things that we can be thankful for during a couple of minutes. While we are doing this, let’s focus on our breathing. I find that on days I do this, I feel calm, relaxed, and the anxiety melts away. The last portion of meditation, let’s focus on what we need to accomplish before we leave the house and go to work. How about this list below?
1. Make up the bed- this gives us something easy to do and at least we can accomplish one thing!
2. Take a shower (and get dressed obviously, unless going out feeling free as a bird is your thing, you won’t see an “Imab- Judging” headline anywhere).
3. Eat a light breakfast- personally morning food makes me feel a bit sluggish during the day, but probably because on the day I eat breakfast, I overdo it. So a couple of eggs and a banana!
4. Pack up some walking clothes for after work.
5. Finally, let’s head to work!
So, we are at work! The morning has gone good, we are awake, energized, and focused! Let’s take just a few moment’s to get that first cup of coffee in us and again reflect on how thankful we are. Just ourselves, the coffee, and a smile. After a few moments, but while there is still coffee, let’s make a list of things we want to accomplish during the day. If you are anything like me, this is where troubles begin to arise again.
I have a habit of feeling like I have to always be productive during work. I can never take a moment to breathe, if I do the boss might find me breathing and assume that I have been doing that the whole time! This is another one of those BOLDFACE LIES!!! I have been making efforts recently to relax more, and doing all that we have talked about doing earlier in this blog should help me in this avenue. Make a list and set out to accomplish them one step at a time. In between these steps, take a small break to reflect on how good life actually is. A “smell the roses” kind of feeling. Then, get back to doing the next item on the list. If at the end of the day you find that you still haven’t accomplished all that you wanted to do, do not stress! This gives you a clear starting point for tomorrow.
Alright, so work is done, we had a good light lunch during the day (you didn’t think I would suggest skipping lunch did you?!) and now what are we do to? Remember those walking clothes we packed in the morning? Let’s use them, unless you are the type that we talked about earlier in the shower section! Regardless, let’s go for a walk. Me personally, I am trying to lose A WHOLE LOTTA’ weight. So my walk. Personally my walking goals are for me to get back to where I can start jogging again. It doesn’t matter how much you walk, just as long as you are getting in some exercise after a long day of work. Focusing on the breathing and how great life truly is regardless of our circumstances. We are making the first initial change in our lives to make it better!
After our walk, it is time to get dinner. Let’s eat! Personally I suggest a balanced dinner. We don’t want to mess up our sleep patterns. Currently, I do not know enough on healthy nutrition to shove my thoughts down your throats on this. Maybe one day I can share what others discuss on nutrition and we can determine what’s what. If you are good on that topic, please share your thoughts!
At this point there are only a couple of hours left in the afternoon, what to do, what to do. During the work week personally I do not chill out often with people, maybe in the future I will change this mindset, but at the moment these last couple of hours are my third and final battle that I have to overcome. The entertainment monster comes whistling down the hallway all casual like, snapping its fingers like a west-side story scene in a cool leather jacket with a smoke, making statements such as “you need to get your YouTube (insert whatever streaming format you like) fix in.” Most days, I agree with it and go down a slippery slope of watching shows and videos until late in the night which throws this whole plan out the window. But, on some days and more so recently, I come out on top and start thinking of content to share, writing on my non-fiction and fiction projects. Once this is done, I think it would be good to go ahead and prepare my clothes for the next morning. Now before sleeping I think the final two events to accomplish is key to a good rest which will fuel a great tomorrow. The first is reading more, say at least 30 minutes before bed. No phone, just reading. The final thing before bed is a repeat of what we’ve become accustomed to throughout the day, mediating and praying on how thankful we are. Slowing my mind down and preparing myself for bed at a decent time, enough to get about 7-8 hours of sleep. Then, wake up and start this new productive life over again!
Well, there we have it a full circle plan that I hope to begin doing and seeing how it will impact my life. I am sure I left out some key details during that day that I will find out about, like I didn’t mention the other times I should go to the bathroom other than the morning! Road bumps like this (not specifically using the bathroom) are what make life so unpredictable. Even if we try to plan everything out perfectly, it will never go according to plan! I feel like I am going off on another topic now, so I will begin closing with this statement, let’s be more productive! I know Ima’B!
Please share your thoughts on this blog and any motivation that you may have down in the comments below! And, if you haven’t yet, please subscribe to this page and follow me on Instagram to keep up to date with this adventure that I am going on. I know I have a lot to learn and I am sure that you guys have much more experience you can share with me and hopefully I have some information that can be beneficial to you in return! As always, I will leave some product links to Amazon goods and the donation hyper link, if you feel moved to proceed with these links, I would be forever grateful! Also, if you are in need of any editing or article/content writing, please send me an email at Imabblog@gmail.com for information and quotes!
Thank you, you beautiful person you!
-ImaB