The Roundup: 02

Productivity updates and prepping for Ramadan.

February was a bit of a trough. My mind was hazy and I was easily distracted by anything and everything. Upon re-reading my journal, I discovered that I daydreamed away most of the month. Now, an audiobook I was listening to told me how important daydreaming is for creativity, I mean, I don’t disagree, but I think there’s a fine line between healthy and compulsive daydreaming. I think I use daydreaming as escapism. Thinking about the dilly dally life I will be living in five? ten? years time. I’m having a hard time bridging the gap between now and them. I don’t want to lose the present moment searching for the next, but I also don’t know what to do in the present. I created a habit tracker for this month and though the tasks were more aligned with my goals, a lot of them were weekly. This took away the accountability of what I needed to do daily and didn’t keep up with a lot of them. Going forward, I’m going to only create a daily tracker and schedule weekly tasks on specific days and see how that fares.

I know a lot of us have been feeling disconnected from our fitness goals, myself included, and I’ve come to some realizations. I noticed that in the winter, when I’m bundled up in layers, I’m no longer flexing my gains. Out of sight, out of mind, out of routine. I started being intentional about viewing my progress, I’ve always done that during gym highs and it encouraged me to workout more this month. Even when I see my fitness goals on Pinterest, I get a surge of motivation for them.

On that note, I think it would be a good idea for me to make a vision board, somewhere I can see it, to feel more motivated towards my goals. For this month, I made a little graphic with my plans to achieve my Ramadan goals.

I’d love to know, what’re some of your Ramadan goals?

Substack

I found myself reflecting on this piece I read last month, for maintaining my habits. I particularly liked the point about reducing the quantity of whichever task I didn’t feel like doing. For example, exercising for 10 minutes instead of an hour, reading for 15 minutes instead of 90. Habit building requires constantly showing up. Even if it’s just for a little bit. It trains our brain to recognize that this is an important task and overtime, we should become more inclined to do it. The infamous 5 minute rule also helps us to pick up something we may be dreading. Committing to a task for 5 minutes is manageable, and once we’ve started, it’s easier to keep going.

One Idea: A Powerful 4-Step Method To Finally Start Being Consistent With Your Plans

Thumbnail

My favourite thumbnail this month was for 'The Magic Bullet'. I enjoyed scattering the letters and adding little details to make it feel magical. I used an oversaturated yellow for the 'Creatine Craze' thumbnail, which felt a little off, so I did go back and use a desaturated yellow instead. In case you're wondering, you can un-publish a post to change the thumbnail and republish without it affecting engagement.

Books

I finished two and half books this month! I continued reading Broken by Fatima Bala and listened to the audiobook for Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal and I read half of Deep Work by Cal Newport. The target audience for Newport’s book felt misaligned with me, so I didn’t end up finishing the book. I enjoyed Bala’s books and I'm excited to have more books with Muslim representation like this one. But my favourite this month was Abdaal’s book!

Ali Abdaal was a doctor who turned to YouTube full time and makes entrepreneurship and productivity content. When his book first launched, I wasn’t that interested, but after finishing it, I have to say, it’s worth the read (or listen). The arguments he made, supported by research, completely changed my perspective on productivity. He argued how we are more productive when we feel good about ourselves and should therefore prioritize our moods and feelings for sustainable productivity. It made me reconsider placing my emotional wellbeing on the reward end of productivity. In hindsight, I realized my most productive moments have been because I felt good before embarking on productivity. It also shifted my perspective on the brown parent mentality about buying things for function over feelings.

In business, we’re taught that consumer purchasing decisions are derived from how a product makes them feel. The aim of marketing is to embody these positive feelings to incite an emotional purchasing response from consumers. I would feel cheated or manipulated if I let my feelings dictate where I put my money (this can be attributed to the widespread deceit from marketing, but that’s a discussion for another time). But now I realize buying things because they make us feel good is not a bad thing. Ultimately how we feel will add the most value to our lives. We’re able to reach more potential within ourselves and derive more from life when we feel good about ourselves. So prioritizing how products or activities make is feel, is part of productivity.

Feel Good Productivity is definitely worth the read, not just to find more efficient ways to be productive, but also create goals that are more meaningful to you!

I’d love to know what you read this month?

Podcast

This month, I listened to this episode of the Huberman Lab with Dr. Ellen Langer. She’s a professor of psychology at Harvard University who’s done a lot of research on the mind-body connection. It inspired my post: ‘The Magic Bullet’ where I shared some of Langer’s research and other research discussed in the episode. This episode was packed with so many gems, I couldn’t talk about everything in one post. A big idea that Dr. Langer researches is mindfulness as the opposite of mindlessness. She argues how we spend much of our lives being mindless and the idea of paying attention to even the mundane, is the key to mindfulness. I hope to write another post on this topic, Insha’Allah. In the meantime, she’s written many books on this topic as well that you can check out.

That’s all I have for this month. I’d love to know any substack posts, books, or podcast you enjoyed this month. I hope you liked this reflection and I’m excited to update you all next month!