My 3 Office-Time Fatigue Busting Sticky Notes
fatigue is not a condition, it's a thought!
Every time I am fatigued, I know I have forgotten to look at my 3 sticky notes of salvation. Honestly, there will never be a time when I won’t need them anymore for I have inscribed one thing in my mind, that I am a lazy ass!
My idea about a good idea is the one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around-Stephen King
All the following three notes have successfully stuck on my desk as sticky notes for many years now, and that’s how I have come to the conclusion of sharing them.
1)Pen down your first read.
whenever in the morning you get up, use your first half n hour in penning down whatever good thing you have read recently.
A good blog, a script you like, highlighted pages of your favorite book, etc.
just put a timer for half n hour, and pen down any shit!
Why?
one thing to know is, when a person’s brain is in the ‘can’t do anything’ zone, it often takes a toll on it to suddenly start working with an assignment, personally, I have always liked a strong cup of coffee to come my way in this ‘can’t do anything’ zone.
but what this exercise does is, first of all, it situates you in one place for half n hour, regardless of all the disturbances around you, which without a coffee for me was not possible earlier.
once this exercise started to situate me, I could of all the things, focus on something that is kept in front of me, naturally!
and eventually, as you get better at writing, you get better at situating yourself at one place for longer times.
this is something you can also refer to as ‘writing meditation’.
1#does writing give you a stronger cognitive kick start?
Many people start their day with reading, reading does give your brain a cognitive kick start, but your body is not completely invested while reading. which means you can sit and read, lie down and read, etc.
But writing, on the contrary, requires a more agile body language, it is a hand-eye coordination exercise that can give you an excellent warm-up for your upcoming day.
It also involves a memory exercise that is, the longer statements you write, the more you exercise your memory.
in a package deal of focus, body language, hand-eye coordination, and memory improvement.
writing can give a much stronger cognitive kick start than reading.
2#writing as the easiest and the most affordable way of reading?
many people like to read but can’t simply manage time for their reading.
for at times your booklist can include books like biographies, philosophies, memoirs, and much such focus and devotion demanding things.
and often your time calculator tends to plan these things for leisure time, which is never available. In short, those books are a misfit in your busy lifestyle.
but when you are writing down those very complex philosophy books, then you simultaneously enjoy both the focus that it gives you for that day and the higher ideals it gives you for the rest of your life.
The next important thing is your writing speed, there is usually some argument put up to the ‘pen it down theory’ that it will require a lot of time to finish books.
sadly yes it will, but the underlying face of the coin is that you will end up spending more time with one philosophy, creating a greater chance for it to impact you.
The moon is much more important than all the rascle stars.
-srila prabhupad
and therefore what philosophies or theories you read about, and keep distantly stored somewhere in a corner of your brain like the distant flickering stars, end up shining brightly like the moon!
3#writing gives you a flavor of escape.
usually, emotional distress leaves your mind restless,
The restless mind is like a drunk monkey, that is bit by a poisonous scorpion.
-Vedic saying
if you are writing down something, that is somewhere relevant to the current situation in life, you somewhere or the other are meditating on that situation through a completely different perspective.
suppose you are going through a breakup! and you start to pen down the climax of Romeo-Juliet, something that will mostly involve more irony than your situation, you end up living their life for half n hour, and how you come out is with a different perspective or at least with a bit of normalization done!
this in turn is a great exercise to soothe that drunk monkey who has just been bit by a poisonous scorpion, if you try to read instead of writing Romeo-Juliet, that restless monkey won’t simply let you.
because writing is an easier way to discipline your thoughts.
2)Check the 90-degree meter
the 90-degree meter is how you are going to look at your upper body posture from now on.
what angle your upper body posture makes with the ground? if it’s making an angle of 90 degrees then the fatigue that you are generating is least.
in a nutshell, the amount of time you are going to spend on 90 degrees, the lesser amount of fatigue you are going to generate.
now I want you to know a very important thing, the inverse of this is also true, that is, if you are at zero degrees, then you are lying down or asleep and the fatigue which is generating in you is maximum!
off-course your standard sleep time is an exception to this rule. that is, your standard sleep time(6–7–8- Hrs) or whatsoever is your standard sleep time, should not be disturbed in order for this meter to work.
Disclaimer: this meter check is all about reminding yourself to try and near the 90degree mark. It is not possible to hit 90degree all time of the day, maybe that’s why there are statues like ‘the sleeping buddha’ to remind you to take it easy at times.
1#Is the 90-degree meter a cure for oversleeping?
The technique for this will involve setting up two different alarms, one is for the time you usually wake up and the other will be half n hour before that time.
so now you have two alarms, one at the start and the other at the end of your last half n hour of sleep.
The time your first alarm goes off, take a hefty pillow and tuck it under your back, in a way that, elevates your upper body posture slightly towards 90-degrees.
gradually, by the second week uplift yourself at the least to a 45-degree angle in your last half hour of sleep.
continue for a week, but don’t drop below the mark of 45-degree.
now try to wake up half n hour early.
what you find is, waking up half n hour early comes a lot more naturally to you now, because you have been using the 90-degree meter to curb your fatigue naturally and gradually.
Most of the people who suddenly start waking up an hour early to jog or do some exercise, will need an afternoon nap or perhaps will find their fatigue increased much more in the span of coming days.
it’s not because you are running out of energy, it’s because you didn’t give your body an intimation of what you are going to follow in the next few days!
2#Can a 90-degree meter improve my daytime energy level?
Now, I want you to know one thing, that the same 45-degree that was good for curbing your sleep time won’t work any wonders in your day time fatigue bursting, because according so this meter 45degrees is very good for sleep time reduction but very bad for day time energy increment.
so make sure most of the time you are on your chair you don’t miss 90-degree by a lot, if so improve gradually.
most of the people who I discuss this with, make a common mistake of dragging themselves to a 90-degree posture by hook or by crook, this can actually result in an increased amount of fatigue as suddenly waking up an hour early to jog can.
another way of working this rule is applying the ‘do nothing’ theory for the first few days, just observe yourself.
what kind of posture do you usually sit in?
Now, that you have observed all this, don’t change your posture, change your surroundings!
have you ever wondered why you feel most alive when you come back from a holiday, its because your energy level is not an internal factor that is generated inside you, it is something that is generated because of your surroundings!
so how I tried the 90-degree rule in my office, is by fixing the surroundings for it.
for example, one of the techniques that work for me is to not keep my laptop on my lap and while on the table tilt its screen a bit away from me as long as possible, this naturally enables me to hit the 90-degree mark most of the time.
3#what happens when you hustle with the 90-degree rule?
if you try to hustle with the 90-degree rule, your body will react to it!
Think about a mother ostrich, who just has just laid her eggs, now you see a man who suddenly picked up her eggs and started to run!
she, the mother ostrich will chase that man till he dies, either by over-running or by under-running!
That mother ostrich, you can think as your body and the suddenly stolen eggs to the neophyte excitement you end up showing on the first day.
so if you try to steal energy from your body suddenly, your body is going to react like that mother ostrich, who will get you, yes!
3)1%
The 1% sticky note is something that is usually stuck on the top left corner of your laptops or maybe somewhere in your workspace where it is just at the right angle for you to frequently view it.
This sticky note will indicate 1%, which is the 1% of your income that is going to go for Society.
charity is not any Yureka concept I am talking about, on the contrary, it is one of the oldest traditions of modern human civilization.
Many of the most ancient religions in the world have professed this idea for thousands of years.
In short, I am not interested in putting you to charity, but I am interested, in you putting up this note. why?
Because it will start a completely new question and answer train inside you.
One of the most observable traits of the brain is that it will ask questions and it will try to answer them.
Most all the acting techniques in the world use this question-and-answer theory to generate emotions, one of the acting techniques is ‘Stephen Books’, techniques for improvisation. (inner doing)
If you see even most of the ancient literature of Vedic wisdom, start with questions and answers.
For example, the great literature of ‘Srimad Bhagavatham’ starts with a chapter called Questions by the sages also in the ‘Bhagwat Gita’ most of the early chapters deal with ‘Arjuna’, the protagonist who is enquiring from ‘Krishna’, the god.
Similarly, most of the authors you read, you will observe, essentially involve question answers in the dialogues of the characters, to get your brain going with whatever the theme of the novel is.
Now every time you look at this 1% sticky note, you will question and answer as usual.
But about the life of the people who you are going to give, this will help generate different emotions, and reduce a lot of incompleteness which one always feels as he follows his passion.
Every time I end up completing 99.9 % of the task I have taken up, I will at the end of the day think about the 1% that is undone but if I am giving something to someone in kindness it always comes with a feeling of completeness.
Kindness is hundred percent.
The feeling of incompleteness is good, it makes one work, but this feeling is good at the start of the day, by the end of the day it at times emotionally takes me over and things become sad!
That is the time when I get exhausted and this sticky note pops up reminding me of the kindness I showed or I am going to show out of my effort.
This sticky note most of the time comes for my help in the time when I am surrounded by some situation involving high pressure.
so in a nutshell, it doesn’t matter to me if I do charity or not, but it is just important for me to look at this note every time I work
for, I often think that I am not working for the 99% of the income that I am going to spend on my own self and family, but I am working for this 1% of income That is going to go to Society.
This reduces a lot of unnecessary noise in my brain and gets me into the ideal work pressure.
