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so
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in high school i struggled a lot with
motivation and energy i would say around
70 of the time i was tired stressed
procrastinating miserable and just
apathetic towards life in school in
general
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i would sometimes have random bursts of
productivity where i would get the
majority of my work done within several
days or a week or two and then i would
inevitably crash and be my normal
miserable procrastinating done with
everything self so today i'll be telling
you how i got out of my procrastination
or black hole slumps in the short term
and also how i've stopped them from
happening in the long term since i
haven't really had any real slumps in
the past year and a half
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so when it comes to getting out of a
slump in the short term the first step
for me was to realize that productivity
and motivation ultimately is and comes
from energy at least in my experience
when i'm sick or i'm really sleep
deprived i'm definitely not thinking
about the goals that i need to
accomplish or how many things i'm going
to get done and so the less energy i had
the more unmotivated apathetic and
generally lazy i felt and the harder it
was to do anything so to get more energy
i needed to remove the dementors from my
life aka the energy drainers and so the
first main energy drainer was my chaotic
sleep schedule and ironically enough
caffeine so exactly around a year and a
half ago i completely quit regular
coffee and tea and switched entirely to
decaf and it honestly changed my life i
had been drinking around three to five
cups of coffee a day and tea on top of
that at night since i constantly felt
tired and it would give me a temporary
boost of energy that would last one or
two hours so i could frantically get my
work done last minute at 2am what i
didn't realize was that caffeine was
gradually ruining my sleep schedule and
the quality of my sleep and so this went
on throughout my entire high school
career so it was no wonder that i was
constantly stressed cranky and
procrastinating because i basically
didn't sleep normally for four years and
i was constantly almost pulling
all-nighters and then sleeping in until
2pm on the weekends which made me feel
even worse so i highly highly highly
recommend switching to decaf and just
seeing if that helps keep in mind also
that you'll probably have some
withdrawal symptoms like headaches and
sleeping a lot more the first week which
is completely normal and actually a good
sign because it means your body is
adjusting and then after that it will
take anywhere between a couple weeks to
a month for your body to normalize and
at least in my experience it became a
lot easier for me to fall asleep and i
naturally started falling asleep earlier
and just felt a lot calmer overall after
i quit caffeine
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so the second dementor or energy drainer
is what i like to call inactive rest if
you think about it life is movement and
the slump is essentially like a black
hole or quicksand the more days i spent
doing nothing and just watching netflix
in my free time the more and more tired
i felt and with each passing day it
became harder and harder to have the
energy to do anything and that's because
our body's energy levels work kind of
like the supply demand chart in
economics the amount of energy your body
gives you depends on the demands that
you place on it that's how professional
athletes have seemingly so much energy
to exercise for hours and hours on end
but for them it's just normal so when
you're not really doing anything your
body just decides eh i don't really know
give you any energy and so it just
doesn't give it to you at least that's
how it works in my experience and the
good news is that there is a pretty easy
way to hack this and that is to
constantly move and be active so the
more energy you expend the more energy
you'll start to have with each passing
day and i find that the best way to
start the energy flow is to exercise so
the more you move each day the more
energy your body will start to give you
and on top of that little things like
making your bed or dressing up require
energy and that will help you not
completely fall back into your slump
again so just as long as you keep moving
and doing things and demanding energy
from yourself
eventually it will start to come and
you'll feel more and more energetic and
motivated to do things
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the final dementor or energy drainer is
procrastination itself i've noticed a
funny thing about procrastination that
the more you procrastinate the more
guilt you feel and the more you want to
avoid what makes you feel guilty and so
our brain starts to also play tricks on
us by imagining just how bad the work we
have to do is and we start trying to
escape from reality since we feel so
overwhelmed and so then the more we
watch things to escape from reality the
worse our fears and guilt gets and then
the more miserable upset and just
overall annoyed and negative we feel
about ourselves and life in general and
so the solution to this is pretty simple
again in my experience but it's just
hard to actually do and so the first
thing i like to do is make a to-do list
of everything i can possibly think of
that's stressing me out
wait did someone say to-do list what a
fascinating notion hi it's me the
productivity fairy i just happen to be
passing by and i just wanted to talk a
little bit about a productivity software
called notion so what exactly does
notion do you say well notion is free
for students and combines all the tools
you need for school notes storage
digital note-taking task lists and more
as you can see here you can take digital
notes by making outlines numbered points
and even toggled questions that you can
use to quiz yourself notion is super
easy and simple to use and they even
have numerous templates available if you
don't want to manually make the pages
yourself to learn more about notion go
to this link here and try it out for
free today all right that's all i have
for today's message you can continue
goodbye
um okay so as i was saying the first
thing i like to do is make a to-do list
of everything i can possibly think of
that's stressing me out and so not what
my ideal self would do or the perfect
schedule or plan just a really simple
list of the most urgent tasks that i
have to get done and so then i
prioritize them in order of the worst
task at the top the one that i dread the
most and the easiest one at the bottom
and then i start from the top since i
used to also procrastinate by doing all
the small menial things and avoiding the
big ones and you'll see that with each
task you complete your mood will be
improving your energy is going to go up
and you're just going to overall feel
more motivated and happy because you're
no longer feeling as stressed out about
everything that you have to do
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so
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we're going to eat all the food without
you
come
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so pretty
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you