I can’t even hold count of how many people, Including myself, that keep saying:
“I’m going to start reading this book tonight!” , “I’m going to learn Micro-services too ! “ “I’m going to start building this app tonight” .
After work :
After work , you probably :
1- Are tired from a long day at work.
2- Remember you have a big list of To-do yet you haven’t figured where to start from.
3-Have issues at work , a mighty communication problem.
4-Have family issues ,personal problems, or someone at work who ‘s mission is to mess up your day .
Now period after that , If someone asks you or your own conscious awakes saying :
“Did you finish that app ? , How was the book ? ” and you start saying : “well that app is old , I have new idea I’m working On , that book was too long , I’m starting a new one asap ” well , wait for it :
Maybe everything is not fine ,maybe you have a rude boss, maybe no one cares about you. Maybe the weather is bad , maybe your car is old. But the real issue is you , you have commitment issues. You start things and you don’t finish them “Looking at my self in the mirror : yup , you too , the one writing this blog post now”.
Now , you start wondering what should I do ? I mean most of the day I’m at work !! I go to work , I go to work I’m tired ! I can’t learn new things ! Really ?
I discovered that , this whole process was wrong , yes ! Months ago I was trying to understand what is Docker and what is Kubernetes , I knew I was capable to understand them quickly , instead I kept saying ‘I’am tired ‘.
wait , but when is it possible to learn new stuff when you pass all day at work !
Simple ! Let me tell you about my journey ! I work from 8:30 to 12:30 and back from 14:30 to 18:30 ( with some extra after-time work) So , what can I do ?
between 12:30 and 14:30 , After having launch , I play for about 10 minutes my favorite game with my phone , later I read as much as I can from the book I’m reading. I finish with my personal activities 10 or 15 minutes before going back to work and like the fact that I earn at least 1 hour that I can invest later at night , but wait how ?
Things you can do After 7 P.M and can change your life
The things you do later in your day , matter ,even if you can’t do a lot . let’s say you sleep at 00:00 or 01:00 like I do , what you do in those 5 or 6 hours ? what you do before going to bed ?
Well , what you really need to do is to take advantage of this time.
I know after a long day like that , the only thing you might want to do , is to relax in front of TV or keep scrolling up and down between Facebook and Instagram .
But , If you want to increase your productivity and learn new things, doing the previous thing will not help and even if it’s hard to start , there is no shame in making baby steps and maybe start by reading even a one page per day .
You know why ?
What you do every night after work can be life and career changing! You may have a new brilliant idea that you can start you own project or company ! You may organize your self a bit so you can spend more time with family or friends ! You may do some freelance so you can make extra money !
I’m not an expert in this , not even close , but those steps helped me :
1-Everyday make a list to-do for the next day with priorities
2-Read a bit every night (you don’t have to read a book , maybe some articles in Medium, dev.to or any other website (‘remove the idea of Facebook from you head now’) . By reading you will acquire new information every day. And even transfer your knowledge within your company , to your friends .
3-Choose a topic , Example : Docker , read a bit and do a bit everyday till you can feel good about it and you can start a project yourself from zero .
4-Try to reflect on what you learn by writing it in blog post or article anywhere you want , maybe linked-in or Medium if you don’t have your own blog.This will keep you motivated and will keep your brain active.
Well , I’m still trying to learn how to fix my morning routine , but if you have an idea how I can improve it , I ‘m all eyes and ears .
One more thing : Remember always to save your work , cause I had to rewrite almost half of this after accidentally I closed this window .
In the end I’m going to add a new section in this blog for books that I read and found awesome .
have a happy blogging day 🙂