A Very Practical Newsletter

I have a very busy period of “doing stuff” coming up.

And since I talked about “doing” last week, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to update my routines, rules and the tools I will be using to aid my productivity. I will also set a weekly challenge. And hopefully you can find something interesting in here that might aid your “doings”.

So yeah. No concepts or theory talk this week. Purely practical stuff.

I see this as building a strong foundation so everything else I am doing can grow from it, without collapsing (hopefully).

Okay. First thing is first. A daily routine for working from home:

6:30am: Wake up time

• Drink half a litre of electrolytes and go for a walk. No phone or music, just walking. This helps me center myself for the upcoming day. The morning light starts my circadian rhythm, firing the right chemicals and hormones around my body at the right time.

7:00am-10:00am First work session

• I am most productive in the morning, so this is when the bulk of my work happens. I try to get the most mentally taxing tasks done during this time and the things I don't enjoy doing.

10:00am - 11:30am Workout+Shower

• Throw some weights around, or go for a run. I need this to feel sane. The best stress/anxiety pill there is. Whenever I avoid working out for more than a couple of days I can feel myself get jittery and more anxious about nearly everything. So yeah this has a massive impact on how I feel day to day.

11:30am BWEAKFAS

• 3 Eggs, 1 Avocado, and a bunch of strained high protein yoghurt. Honestly I could eat this breakfast for the rest of my life. Lots of protein, a decent amount of fat, and low carb. This means I stay full for quite a while and I don’t have a suger crash half way through the day.

12:15am - 5:00pm 2nd Work sesh

• The type of work I will be doing here is less draining. It is more on the creative side of things, such as idea generation. I find that if I try to do something that requires a lot from me later in the day, I tend to fail more than I would like. Additionally, the work is split into 30-minute work sessions with 5-minute breaks (also known as the Pomodoro technique). I find that this helps me avoid getting distracted.

After 5pm, I get some freedom. I might do some more work if needed. I might have dinner and chill. Might play some beach volleyball. Or be a good boyfriend and spend some time with my lady. But I have to be in bed by 10:30pm.

Night time routine:

Teeth → Take notebook to bed to write to do list for the next day → Read until I fall asleep.

Planning the next day is essential to me. The one thing I know for sure is that if I wake up and do not know what I am supposed to be doing throughout the day, there is a very high % that I will get distracted and get very little done.

Of course, this changes day-to-day. Some days, I do podcasts, which switches things around. Some days, I might have something on late in the evening. However, I always find that having a structure in place means that when I have to break it, I can come straight back to it a lot more easily.

Non-negotiables, even on days that I have go to work (go on a shoot).

Wake up and Bed time stay the same where possible.

Morning walk.

No smart phone usage from 9:30pm to 11:00am. (I use a brick phone for emergencies that sits next to my bed. https://youtu.be/fDP6ow-Gc0s )

Tools I use to avoid distraction

Phone app:

one-sec: A very simple app that helps limit the use of apps that tend to distract you (social media mostly). What it does is add a 5-10 second delay from the moment you click the app to the moment you can actually access it. It gives me just enough time to process whether I am actually opening the app for something useful, or just getting distracted.

App for all devices:

Freedom: My favorite app. I have been using it for nearly three years now. It lets you block apps and websites for as long as you want, and you can create schedules. It also syncs to all my devices, so my laptop, iPhone, and PC are all connected to it.

• The schedule I will be using is from 9:30 PM to 11:00 AM. The only apps and websites I will be able to access during those times are the ones I need for work, which are Notion (the app I use to write this newsletter and to organize basically everything else), Gmail, and WhatsApp.

• You can get it here - https://freedom.to/

Other rules:

• No background content. If I am doing something, I will be doing it with all my focus. I am terrible at convincing myself that I am going to put some ASMR in the background while doing work and that will somehow make me work better. It doesn't. It is another way of sneakily distracting myself.

• NO flipping p*rn, that shit sucks the dopamine seretonin and all the other hormonal chemicals that …. I don’t really know what I am talking about lol, but yeah it sucks the life out of me.

  
  

Also CHALLENGE TIME baby.

From previous experiences I have found myself to function very well under a challenge preface. So here goes.

No visual content week.

Pretty self explanitory. Challenge is to not consume any visual content/information for the purposes of entertainment. One exception is watching something in a social setting. (I am going to watch Barbie with the gf tonight :) )

I find that this is currently my biggest weakness so removing it will hopefully be very beenficial.

I made a youtube video a few months ago talking about how I have a second phone, but in the video I talked a fair bit about most of the things here. Here is a link to it if you fancy a watch - https://youtu.be/fDP6ow-Gc0s

Lots of Love,

Koko

2x Podcasts for your brains this week. I am pleased with the way the whole KOKO PODS is shaping up.