Day 1, Hour 0
Welcome to Path Towards a Dreamer's Focus! This audio log is all about a challenge that I will be undertaking.
The Focus Training Challenge #
Focus Training is a challenge that spans over 12 days and involves several activities.
These activities are there to help bounce back from laziness, get organized and get a healthy mindset. Aimed for artists and people who just need a quick bounce back to productivity.
The challenge includes: #
- Creating a daily To-Do list, and using it daily
- This is the task of basically observing and recording what you do for the day, afterwards you put down what you need to do into a to-do list!
- It helps get the mind off of thinking what to do and what to do next, and likely making sure you don't miss what's missing.
- (Physical list preferred, gives you the satisfaction of actually doing something)
- Batching your daily activities
- This is the task of batching, meanining bundling tasks together, easy first then hard next. Makes starting daunting tasks a lot more easier and routine.
- You start off with an easier task like say, washing your face, making a cup of coffee, then you start drawing/programming.
- Setting the number of hours you work / schedule and following it
- This is the task of setting an amount of time aside for work and break.
- If you tend to work without care or spread out the entire day, this will help so you have dedicated time to work on important things and time for your own!
- Give yourself a good amount of hours to work with, that's 6 for me!
- Setting dedicated break days
- This is the task of having a dedicated day or two for just a break.
- Having a dedicated day for a break and for your own things is good for mental health! Use this dedicated day to relax, and just have fun!
- Using the Pomodoro Method
- This is the task of spacing out the amount of time you have to work and having short breaks in-between.
- By doing so, you prevent yourself from tiring out faster and gives you space to think and relax.
- Meditating to calm the mind
- This is the task of meditation, or the task of calming down to clear your head.
- When we do work, sometimes we have trouble of thinking of solutions or generally stress. Meditation is there to help clear your mind so you can start fresh again.
- It also helps on removing stress and rampant thoughts. While it seems boring, it's worth trying.
- Splitting work over a few days
- This is the task of splitting different parts of your work over multiple days.
- Spreading over days helps out on not stressing yourself out overworking on one single piece of work. For example: you work only on lineart for today, coloring tomorrow.
- It helps you out by switching roles on your work too, so you can focus on one objective at a time.
- Block websites
- This is the task of blocking social media and websites that commonly distract you. (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube)
- By recognizing that you've been spending a lot of time on certain sites, you block them so you can focus on work more.
- With the recent news also, it keeps your mental state healthy while you work.
- Putting your phone away while doing the work
- This is the task of giving yourself distance from your phone.
- Often times, if you have your phone next to you, you have the impulse to pick it up and check social media. It's essentially the same reason above.
- You can do more by uninstalling social media apps too and just restrict to checking it only on your PC!
The challenge itself will be hard at first as you get used to it, and you may take several attempts but the idea is that you get yourself into a rhythm into a healthy lifestyle by balancing work, play and rest. This may seem daunting, but you don't have to do them all at once. Slowly introduce each one and form a habit.
On this first episode, I open up talking about my reasons on why I would do it, then talk about my goals to achieve, and finally the measures I would be doing including the challenge.
P.S. Sorry about the glitchy audio, didn't think my noise supressor would be intense!