According to a recent survey, globally on average people spend 6 hours and 38 minutes looking at the screen for non-related work activities. When you think about it, that’s a lot of time to be spent on experiencing someone’s life rather than ours.

Where I am from, the number is quite staggering. Rather than 6 hours, it is 7 hours spent on things that aren’t quite productive. A long screen time that may seem harmless can actually bring problems to our body and brain. Although we don’t really experience the discomfort right away, studies have shown various implications such as sleep problems to even risk of early neurodegeneration.

I used to fall into those averages and sometimes even more in some days. To me, one of the main causes is streaming services that I like to watch while winding down. I always go on youtube, Netflix and even Viu to watch movies, series or anything I could get my eyes on. Other than that, I don’t really use my phone that much.

As much as I was mindful in the past, due to recent events in my life, I fell back into this bad habit and only decided to take some action after realizing that time flies and felt like it all just passed me by.

Well, sure I did some meaningful things here and there such as introducing Hive to a bunch of strangers around here, coaching people to get their first remote job and did a webinar talking about my experience working remotely for more than a decade. If those were worthy of an accomplishment, then that’s what I did.

However, to my gold standard, those aren’t something that I consider accomplishment. There are still a few harder things that I need to do and accomplish to truly feel like I did something meaningful.

For me personally, to reclaim my life and focus so that I don’t feel like drifting away, it was time of assessment. I don’t spend a lot of time on my laptop but my phone was the source of temptation. So, I ended up disabling youtube, uninstalling netflix and viu, all the streaming services I had. The thing is, as much as I can still access them on my laptop, it’s not always mobile and I am less likely to check on them. Now, this is pretty much what I had on my phone.

Doom scrolling can contribute to those added hours and well just as I was touching on the subject, too much screen time can put us at higher risk for neurodegenerative diseases. The thing is, I don’t want that to happen as I am starting to notice some signs that I need to step back from the screen.

I am in the time when I need my brain the most and conserving its energy and ensuring its functioning is going to be my main concern throughout this year and the next 3 years. So, I need to get back into studying mode and that won’t happen with that many distractions and shorts that I normally watch.

Other than relying on those, I also started going back to the way I was, using a Pomodoro timer and an app called Focus To-do. This app helps you stay focused on your task using a pomodoro style timer. It uses a 25 minute interval with a 5 minute break in between. Once you are done, it will show that you have completed a few cycles and you would be surprised of how productive and even accomplished you are within only an hour of time.

Focus to-do has always been helping me not only stay consistent with my goal but also helps me feel like I don’t drift away with meaningless and mundane tasks. Life is all about priority, conserving energy and saying no, more often. So, you see, with this, I can limit the amount of things that I do which feels meaningless and mundane.

Usually we overestimate and sometimes underestimate the amount it takes to actually do a task. Trust me, I have been living my life as if time was an abundance for more than 3 years now. The truth is, time isn’t and they aren’t something we can’t buy. We don’t live in the movie called TIME where it’s a commodity and currency that can actually be traded. Naturally, the older we get the more we realize that money can’t even buy the time that we spent.

The other tool I am using is the good old spreadsheet. As much as I have been discovering notion and how it works, my brain can’t make sense of notion. It’s too cluttered and can be overwhelming. To my brain, spreadsheets or some type of excel works best where I can also log everything and besides these days they can be customized into something more “aesthetic” whichever is your aesthetic would be.

Being reminded of our goals and having it on an eye-level would remind us why we’re doing the hard work. It’s so easy to just laze around and do nothing. I did that too for the last 3 years and surprisingly, though I was still doing something, I am still not satisfied with the trajectory of my own life. So since last year, I have been doing this real personal development stuff and i can certainly notice some tremendous changes in it.

Other than a daily prayer that I stick on my wall, I have my goals too, to remind me why I have to do some hard things and sacrifice a few things in the process of acquiring them.

In case you didn’t know, KPI is a key performance index. That is often used in project management and something that can be applied in our personal life too.

There are many ways to actually do that and combine it with the idea of SMART goals. I like to use KPI to measure if I am still on track or off track with my goals.

You would be surprised at how far you’ve become when you actually track all these things.

Another thing that I’d like to point out is that where I am from, we have too many holidays. While I personally don’t subscribe to these holidays, it is indirectly affecting my own productivity. For instance, banking and trade also halts during these holidays and families are always having some events on long holidays which causes a little disturbance in my workflow. I am not always good at navigating those but I can say as I grow older, I am getting good at saying NO more often.

I just turned 28 recently and realized some of my years weren’t spent in truly living my life and who I am. It always feels like my life was just the background noise, something buzzing but never truly shined. It’s time to reclaim it back and truly live.