Being a productive, well-rounded person is hard. I don’t think there are enough people out there that are actually talking about this well enough.

It is difficult to get up in the morning, plan your day, and then try all that you can to manage your time to ensure that you optimally use your day, sometimes regardless of how you feel.

Sure, there are some days that you wake up and get a burst of energy that lasts for half the day in which you just want to perform, get all your tasks done on time, and genuinely will enjoy the feeling of grinding for a major chunk of the day.

For me, that happens about once a week, and often, I get that sort of energy after spending the previous day not performing to the best of my abilities and then wake up and, instead of acknowledging the guilt that is really the reason underlying my sudden burst of energy, I decide to overachieve the next day. Of course, one thing that I have learnt is that when I set out to over achieve, I do not end up being able to accomplish all that I have set out to do. As I explained in my other post on planning my days , I am almost a pro at setting out to do just too much in a day than is humanly possible.

However, most of the time, I wake up, and I hover around median energy, the sort of energy that I need to accomplish just enough sometimes, without particularly over romanticizing what I am about to do. So I wake up and I know I am going to work, I may or may not enjoy it, but I am going to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that I get when I perform the tasks that I have set out for myself.

And then there are days I wake up and feel an intense headache just looking at my laptop, and feel as though I would rather do any other thing than actually sit down to work.

A few productivity books acknowledge days like this, the ‘hard days’, the days in which you do not have any atom of motivation left in you, in which your reserve of willpower is completely dried up, in which you want to do nothing but lie in bed and press your phone and watch movies and eat junk food, do any other thing than get up to do some work.

Sometimes, I have found that this also happens after a day of over exerting myself. I wake up then, feeling weary and sleep deprived, and then I look at my desk, and remember how hellish the other day was, how I worked myself up to a headache, and then just the thought of getting up and being as productive as I was the other day is enough to send chills running down my spine.

There are two things that usually happen to me when this sort of situation comes up. One is that I may actually laze about for a few hours before I finally guilt trip myself into working, or I remember people on YouTube, study streamers, who spend 12 hours daily doing nothing but sitting on their desks and studying, even one that was able to do so for an entire year, or the productivity gurus that I read books on who can achieve seemingly impossible feats and then I get hard on myself, and I force myself to get up and sit on that desk and open that laptop and work. I mean, I have read enough productivity books to know that ‘the grind never stops’ (but it can take some pauses though).

And then there are days it happens to me mid day. As a creative, there are bound to be times in which I get so frustrated with my writing that I just abandon it all and go to take a nap or go do something else to avoid staring at the jargon that I am conjuring up. But then, the problem is, the moment that I leave work that I am doing, it is terribly difficult to summon the energy to go back to continue, especially when I know that going back to it means going back to the hurdle that I know I am supposed to provide a solution for.

But that is just one of the problems. Because there is a reason there are scores of books on productivity and discipline and why, according to Market Research Blog, the self-help industry is worth over 10.5 billion dollars (according to a 2020 research). You see, this discipline is very difficult to accomplish and we humans are not very good at it.

I think one reason hard days are so, well, hard is because it is in those days that it seems almost impossible to practice delayed gratification. I mean, do you think it is easy to put away your phones and delete loved apps and movies so that you can actually work to become, you know, successful and accomplished in life? Of course not. You think there is anyone out there who, when given the choice between working out, getting up early, performing tasks, checking off to-do lists, being productive and just lying on the bed and streaming movies for hours on end, with the assurance of still ending up being successful would choose the former? I mean, the person would have to be half mad.

We all know that. We all have had situations in which we have had to let go of things that we would rather do just so that we can accomplish things that we have set out for ourselves. And we all know how much it hurts to do so. And one thing that I have learnt is that it hurts even more during the hard days.

I feel like one of the true reason it is so difficult for people to push through during the hard days, is because that you never really know whether you are even going to succeed, despite all that you put yourself through to ensure that you do. Have you ever had that moment, when, during the times in which you have lost all motivation, you find yourself thinking, well, this might not even work anyway, so why even bother? I know that I have.

There is a lot of difference between knowing that if you wait for sometime more and exercise will power, that you will most definitely get the second cookie and being made to exercise willpower on the grounds that even if you wait, there is no real assurance that you might get that second cookie.

This, I have found out, can be a major deterrent to even exercising discipline in the first place. I mean, it is really difficult to burn the midnight candle when there is always that knowledge at the back of your mind that you might not even end up being successful.

Are you reading on, hoping that I would provide some sort of tried and tested way of putting a permanent end to the pain and the uncertainty that is associated with discipline and delayed gratification, to push through the hard days? Because there is none. Trust me, if there were, I would have found it already somehow.

Sure, if you do your research, you might find some feel good articles or write-ups that would give you 200 things to do to ensure that you remain productive all the time and ensure that you succeed no matter what. But there is a chance that you might end up feeling guilty when you wake up some mornings and find that even after all you have done, you still have the hard days, the days when work feels like actual literal hell.

The point remains that this is a normal part of human existence, and we just have to deal with it. But there is one thing that I have found, and it is that, when you are properly equipped, it is easier for you to deal with it. Being properly equipped with all the right knowledge on habit formation, the ways to push through hard days, how to subdue the demon of procrastination and so on makes the difference between a person who gives in to his or her lack of motivation on hard days and the person who actually pushes through when such days come up.

This post is already long enough, and taking a proper deep delve into the different methods and systems used by the best productivity coaches will take quite a lot of words, so I think I will leave with just a few tips, nothing more.

First is this, realize that whilst there would be an uncertainty as regards success no matter how hard you work towards it, you can most definitely be assured of failure if you fail to put in the necessary work to achieve your dreams. Yes, sure, if we were in an ideal perfect world in which all things worked out just how we wanted things to go, we would not have to worry about failure after working hard. A good number of the time, we would face setbacks as we work towards our goals, but this should never hold us back from doing the needful in terms of our goals and dreams. And this should nevr be an excuse to give in during the hard days.

However, always remember to put the Lord into whatever you are working towards, so that at least, if you experience any setbacks, you can be sure that it is God’s instruction for you to keep pushing as it is not the right time to get the desired success and not a clear indication of the fact that you are not working in line with your purpose in life.

Again, I can never underestimate the importance of just starting. One thing that I have found is that even during the times in which I have felt as though I would rather do anything other than do a particular activity, the moment that I started, I would end up being able to do more work than I thought I would be capable of doing.

Of course, if it were easy to just start, a lot of us would have started doing the important things that we were supposed to do a long time ago, but it is very difficult to when you are not in the mood to. Some time later, I will write a blog post on the importance of making yourself bored enough that you have no other option than to work (and by this, I mean removing all distractions so that you can have nothing else to take your mind off doing the needful).

Another thing that is important is to understand your energy levels and how to optimize it so that you do not feel weak and lethargic when you are supposed to be active and productive. But this is something that I am still working on and researching on, so it would be a post for another day. One of the key methods that I have learned, however, is that understanding your sleep cycle, can help with keeping us at optimal energy and that we should all acknowledge the importance of knowing the effects that food, especially sugar and energy boosters like coffee, has on our bodies and energy during the day.

Another thing that I have noticed helps me to work for long periods of time is knowing the things that can keep me going. This includes music, snacks by my side, and being in a comfortable, well lit environment. A lot of productivity authors have found that the conditions of the environment that a person works in goes a long way in determining how willing the said person would be to do a particular work. Hence, that is why many people dedicate themselves to making sure that their work environment is as pleasant as possible and having all resources available within arm’s reach as they study.

Of course, there is so much more that comes with being able to exercise discipline and delay gratification. Otherwise, there would not be a million and one books on the topic. But if you are battling with starting on hard days, maintaining focus and delaying gratification, you can start with these little tips that have proven to work for me.

 

One resolution that I made this month of May, in a bid to take care of my physical body, which I was sure that I had been ignoring and taking poor care of, was to begin exercising. This was one habit that I had developed during the lockdown, but abandoned once I came back to school.

By the time I made the firm resolution that I would try everything that I could to ensure that I never missed a day throughout the month, which was something that I did not do even when I began it in 2020, I decided to think through how I was to execute what I wanted.

Even though I did not sit down to write my plans down, I used some tips that I had learned from reading James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ to achieve the goal that I had set out for myself.

The first thing that I did was to draft out an implementation intention (a plan made before starting a habit on where and when to execute the habit) in my mind. To achieve that, I made use of habit stacking. Knowing that fixing a particular time of the day had never really worked for me all the times that I had tried it out, I decided that instead; I was going to pair it with a habit that I did every day. This, according to James Clear, is known as habit stacking, i.e. identifying a current habit that a person already does each day and then stacking a new behavior on top of the current habit.

So, I decided I would make sure that I had my workout done before I took my bath. A lot of the days, I prepared what I would use to take my bath, and then, with everything in place, I slipped into my workout clothes and began exercising. Eventually, I involuntarily did another form of habit stacking. When I could not exercise just before bathing, most of the time because I had somewhere to go first thing in the morning, I made sure that I exercised before I slept, even if it turned out to be the last thing that I was going to do before bed.

Again, I looked back on the previous times that I had tried to bring back the habit of exercising and see what made me unable to stick with the habit. I found that there was something that I kept on doing that made it almost impossible to go through with my plans to exercise every day. This was because, whenever I exercised, I forgot that my body had not been exercising for a while and needed some time to readjust to having an exercise regime and started out strongly. Hence, on my first day of deciding to exercise again, I was prone to overstretching my body so much that I ended up hurting myself, rendering me unable to walk upstairs or run without wincing for the next two to three days after the hellish workout regime that I put myself through.

Of course, what this meant was that I could not exercise during those two to three days and after that, because of the negative thoughts that would flood y mind calling me lazy for not being able to stick with the habit, even though it was impossible to do so, by the time I had gotten physically capable of exercising, I had lost all the morale to do so.

Furthermore, even if I did not sustain as much harm, even if I could do such exercises, if I could pull such off for about three days, I would wake up on the fourth day with an inexplicable dread for the torture that I was once again going to pass myself through and just the thought of spending the time that I set out to spend torturing my body was enough to make me give up whilst berating myself at the same time for not having enough willpower to do so.

So, I decided I was going to implement the two-minute rule. What the two-minute rule states is that when starting a new habit, one should make sure that it takes less than two minutes to do. Of course, for me, two minutes was too small to accomplish anything, so it was more or less three to five minutes for me. Hence, on the worst of the worst of the days when all the motivation I had to exercise was almost completely depleted, or on days in which the last day’s exercise left my body feeling somewhat sore, I was going to spend only about five minutes exercising. And not only that, my exercises on such days were going to comprise mostly simple yogic stretches, nothing that would leave me out of breath or sweating.

Of all the things that I decided, I think this one was the elixir that made me able to accomplish this mission that I had set out for myself this month. This was because, on days that I just was too unmotivated, or the stresses of the day made me feel incapable of carrying out the workouts that I had set out for myself, or on days in which, for one reason or the other, I was feeling unwell; I did not have to sweat out over the fact that I had to exercise that day. This was because I knew if the worst was to happen, I was going to do some stretching exercises from the app that I used.

In fact, after a particular day in which I had carried a heavy load for a long time and hence, had my shoulders aching for two days, for those two days, all the exercises that I did were merely targeted stretches meant to ease the pain that I felt on my shoulders, neck, and back.

Again, to make sure that I had all the physical cues that were going to push me to exercise, my exercise mat was always lying in the corner of my room and my exercise garments were always accessible for use. In fact, on some days during which I did only stretches, I did not even make use of the regalia, using only my mat and whatever I was wearing as long as it gave me enough leg space to do the exercises that I wanted to do. Again, the three apps that I used to exercise were always staring right at the home screen of my phone, next to some apps that I used almost every day, just like my music app and my bible app.

I have been able to actualize the exercise that I set out to do throughout the month of May. The exercises that I engaged in included power walks, full-body exercises, full-body stretches, thigh workouts, abs exercises, arm exercises, splits training, glute exercises, walking/ jogging for relatively long distances, etc. I did not set out the goal to become ripped because I was terrified of injuring myself and not being able to work out the next day. Hence, the longest amount of time that I spent exercising was about twelve minutes (minus breaks to stabilise my body taken in between exercises which, if calculated, would probably increase the time to about twenty to twenty-five minutes).

The goal for me was just to inculcate the habit of exercising into my life. My long-term goal is to spend about twenty to thirty minutes daily exercising (minus breaks) at least four times a week for the rest of my life and I think that with how I have started, I have garnered enough knowledge and strength of will to stick with the habit long term.

Workout clothes and mat

 

Another strike has fallen upon all University students in public universities in Nigeria for the past few months, with threats of it being extended for more months, even indefinitely.

Now, in case you are not Nigerian and happen to bump into this blog post; or are a Nigerian student in a private university, blissfully unaware of what is happening to your mates on the other side, I feel obligated to say what the strike is all about. It is, simply put, something that people have described as an annual festival in Nigeria in which students do not go to school for months – and then spend the few months that they are allowed to spend in school being shoved faster than they ought to by a school management that generates almost impossible curriculums just so that they can make up for the lost time.

The last time that we as students had such a long expanse of time to spend at home was in 2020 in which, as a result of the strike and the pandemic, we ended up spending almost a year at home – no kidding, and then ended up cramming four semesters in one year (aka two years in one year) last year in the university that I attend, just to make up for the lost time- again, no kidding.

And when we were just about to settle back to a normal school session after the hectic year that we had last year, boom, even before the year began, before we had spent a good month in school this year, another strike came upon us.

All I can say is; I do not want to think of what 2023 or the late quarter of this year, depending on whether or not an indefinite strike is going to be embarked on, would look for me academically. I think I may have a panic attack.

And by the time the strike began, our able government (get your PVC fellas, let's change things), as always, advised the students to engage themselves in quote-unquote productive endeavours. Now, I fully support and am a part of the group of people who agree that forcing students to go out of their way to learn skills during periods of time that they should be in school is nothing short of an insult to the entire academic system. However, the fact remains that we have to choose between either doing that or spending the entire time killing our brains by doing nothing. 

So, even without the ‘helpful’ advice that we have gotten, the knee-jerk reaction for students during a strike, at least since I became a student, has been to go and learn a skill. The last strike that we had, I used it to learn wig making and I have to say that during a short time after that, my wig making skills helped me make some cash in school.

Now, the moment I heard that there was going to be another strike, the first thing that I did was to sit and think of what I wanted to achieve during this strike. This time, I decided that learning new skills was out of the question for me. I had done that before, and I instead, chose to harness and work on the few skills that I had presently.

I decided that a huge chunk of my time was going to be dedicated to two things, reading, and writing. Hence, I was going to go back to studying productivity books, a habit that I had abandoned as a result of the hectic academic session that we had, was going to develop the habit of reading spiritual books, and I  was going to learn how to train my brain to memorize faster, develop my writing skills, write more stories, begin blogging, exercising and work on my typing speed to increase my productivity.

At that time, though, I believed that the strike was going to last for only a month. But it has been raging since February so I was very much in the wrong with my belief. However, I did have every intention of exerting myself, but not in the way that would be evident in the short term. 

What this meant was that I had no intentions of going after certificates, had no intentions of going for physical internships as I had resolved that I would do that later in my academic life, and was going to set virtual internships aside unless they were by firms and companies that had something to offer that I was interested in. I decided that I was going to be functional in the organizations that I worked for in school in whatever activities they were going to be doing online during the strike period, but other than the book clubs that I had founded, was not going to go out of my way to look for new positions in new organizations.

I know, I know. If you are the sort of person that values the certificates and the internships and whatnot, and there is nothing wrong with that, I still do, you might think that I have been wasting my time ever since the strike – I mean, no internships? No new skills learnt? No certificates gotten from webinars and workshops? None? None at all? As a law student? The abomination! What are you going to post on your Linkedin then?

And for some time, I did believe that you had to be lazy not to be actively looking out for those kinds of things. For a while, I thought that this was the right way to go about things, and I still do to some extent now. But I had had a few experiences that made me snap in my head one day and decide that I was tired of what I termed the "Law (or University) Student Rat Race”. I was done with it, done with the fact that I kept doing stuff that I neither liked nor even got any value from because I wanted to get that, you know, shiny certificate to post on Linkedin just to get people to send me already suggested comments from Linkedin ‘Congrats on your new post!’.

Now, before I begin my rant, I believe I should share a few things about myself. Now I believe that I am something called a Type A personality, as most law students and lawyers are said to be. This means that I am very career and productivity-oriented, a bit of a workaholic, and I hate having nothing to do, hate feeling lazy and unproductive.

During my first year at the university, I came a bit naïve and not so aware of things. And by the time the pandemic came and I began my productivity journey, one of the first things that I practiced was something called Digital Minimalism, in which I drastically reduced the amount of time that I spent on the internet, most especially on any social media except Youtube for my ‘Study with Me’ videos and relaxation.

By the time I came back for my second semester of Year One, I found that I had missed out on a lot of webinars and moot court competitions and whatnot. Since I still believed that all I had to do was work towards my grades, I was not an active member in any organization except for one.

But then, all around me, people were doing stuff, stuff that I could not do, stuff that I was confused about, stuff that I was beginning to realize that I should want to do.

Of course, now that I am very much actively involved in those things, I realize that I greatly exaggerated the knowledge of the rest of my peers and felt depressed for nothing, but at that period, I felt grossly inadequate as a student, confused and stupid at times even.

And so I did what I still believe was the reasonable thing for me to do; I began to participate. I made friends with the right people, and spent a lot of my time in the faculty- the faculty was essentially more of a habitation for me than my hostel. And by the end of the second semester of my second year, just a few months after, I had become an active person in moot court, even became lead counsel for some cases (law stuff kindly ignore if uninterested), had joined several clubs and taken executive positions, had done my first physical internship and had applied for some virtual ones, had participated in a Model United Nations Conference, had participated in several essay competitions and had gotten awards in few, had become a part of the executive in both my faculty and my fellowship. 

Essentially, I was on a roll. If there was any activity to be done that I felt was worthy of note for you know, my ‘CV’ or just to feel as though I was doing something others were not doing, something that would make me stand out, I did it. My CGPA was also decent and I had also begun a part-time job in writing that promised good pay.

Now, I also had several burnouts during my second year in the university, did literally no fun activities as the little time I had outside of school activities were solely dedicated to my academics, and I generally operated at a very low energy level. I had also completely abandoned exercising and other leisure activities that I was engaged in. One time I complained to my friend that I could not wait for the year to end so that I could have even a little bit of fun and he was like, “Why not do it? it only takes a few hours.” To which I truthfully replied that I just did not have a few hours to spare. 

I was performing amazingly in my second year at the university. But I was not the top performer, especially when it came to extracurricular activities.

And that lay the problem, or at least what I thought was a problem. Type A that I was, it greatly bugged me that I was not the top performer and the ‘great’ thing about today’s world is that if you are not the best performer in any aspect of life that you are interested in, the world just has a way of shoving it in your face that you are not. As for me, apart from the peer pressure that came with seeing my friends doing things that I was not doing, the real madness began when, acting on the advice of a senior colleague, I opened a Linkedin account.

Now, Linkedin is a good space, and it is good to have the pleasure of creating the best profile out there and talking about all the great things that you have done. You worked for it. If you choose to share your successes with the world, I would be stupid to bash you.

But the thing with Linkedin, at least the thing that I noticed was that even if I did not follow these people, the algorithm was carved out for me to run mad with the feeling of suboptimal performance. 

Yes, I had a good CGPA and was the executive of several organizations but so what? This person in my timeline interned in five of the top law firms in his first year, won a scholarship, won first prize in ten essays, started his or her organization, has thousands of followers and thousands of studio pictures wearing a suit with hands folded tightly on his or her chest and an expression that screamed top performer and this other person over here in my timeline? Well, he just graduated with a 4.99 CGPA in law. First-class has levels, my dear.

And at first, any time that I saw someone say anything negative about Linkedin and the performance obsession or toxic productivity that it tended to create, I was always the first to see them as lazy and unserious with their lives at best or just plain envious of other people’s accomplishments at worst. While they were busy complaining about the pressures of the app and the toxic productivity culture that it promoted, I was busily screenshotting the profiles of other students that had amazing profiles and trying to get to know what and how they got to where they were, asking questions, doing research and whatnot, essentially trying to find out ways to copy them, to be just like them. Yes, I had done a few things but then so what? I was not good enough. I did not have twenty experiences and job positions. I had not gotten hundreds of thousands off an essay competition. I was not the best compared to my peers over there. And I wanted to be the best. 

Healthy competition?

At a time I thought that it was, but not quite.

This was because, I was so interested in getting and being, performing, and over-performing, that I did not even notice that I had begun to work on autopilot. I jumped into every opportunity that I saw without even thinking, taking the time to ask God if it was the right way for me to go or even seeing if I enjoyed what I was doing. I believed that despite the fact I had not yet found an area of interest in law that appealed to me, I still had to grind, still had to do things that I had little to no interest in, because that was what the top performers were doing.

If I missed out on something that I would have been able to get, I beat myself up. If I noticed that something had happened that I would have played a part in, I felt bad. If I noticed that some of the top performers had secured a position, even though I didn’t have much interest in that position, I got angry at myself for not getting the same. I was obsessed with doing and doing and doing, regardless of whether I even knew what it was that I was doing. 

Why? Because that was what I was told I had to do. I was told that good results were common but what stood out was having that jaw-dropping resume. I was told that I had to keep performing, had to keep getting more of everything. More positions, more awards, more titles. I aspired for things I did not even like, ignoring the fact that I was abandoning so many things I liked doing as a result.

And thank God that I had gotten a few experiences that made me reevaluate what it was that I was even doing.

First, because I was in some organizations, I began to notice a certain phenomenon among students.

All of the top performers wanted to be a part of something. Every single one of them wanted to lead an organization. But I realized that what a lot of people wanted were the titles but not the knowledge to be acquired from the position or to even to do any work at all.

By the time that I started joining organizations, receiving appointment letters and whatnot, I began realizing that probably up to half of the student organizations that I was a part of did little to nothing, and a lot of them had executives who were just executives by title. Most of the time, an organization died when someone managed to secure his or her way to the top with no intention to do anything with the position he or she has acquired.

And I feel ashamed to say this, but there was a brief time that I kind of liked those kinds of organizations. Because I was already doing so much, they were my avenues to doing even more without actually doing more. There were some that I would get appointment letters and certificates of appreciation from after the tenure had passed without having done any single thing there, not because I shirked from my duties – in fact, I hate when people do that and hence strive not to- but because there were no duties for me to perform in the first place.

But did I use the names of the positions and the pictures of the certificates to garnish my Linkedin profile and posts? You bet I did. 

And at first, I thought it was a rare phenomenon until I asked about some other organizations, curious to learn all that was being done there, only to hear someone mention something along the lines of, “Well, we are not very active, you know.” I would see even the highest of leaders of the student organizations doing nothing but identifying as being leaders. I would see people struggle to get positions not because they intended to do anything, but because they wanted to bask in the glory of getting those positions. Now, this did not happen in all organisations, some had shown themselves to be very effective and functional. But the number of organisations that were like that was alarming. As I said before, many people only wanted the glory of the title and nothing more. 

In fact, I had participated in an online internship in which people just wrote their names as present for the zoom meetings, sometimes even begged someone to help them with it, without actually participating in anything, just so that they could receive that shiny certificate to display on their social media. 

And I realized that I was not the only one that was caught up in this web, I was not the only one doing things that I did not want to do simply because it was being done by the quote-unquote top performers.

I have come to resent that mindset. What is the purpose of doing things, and engaging in activities if you are not getting any value from them? What is the purpose of acquiring titles that you do not even enjoy having? What was the point of letting school pass through you if you were not even having a good time while doing so?

Now the strike is before us and another wave of madness has set in, just slightly different from that which I noticed during the academic sessions. Now, every young student is under the pressure of acquiring skills, not just any skill, but certain preferred ones like digital affiliate marketing, UI/UX, copywriting, forex, crypto, graphics design, and the likes. There are dozens of both paid and free webinars and advertisements that seem to urge students to perform, get, learn, and make them feel as though they are wasting their time if they are not busy learning a skill or two.

And then there are the internships. Not every faculty takes this as a priority, but for my faculty, this pressure begins to mount up whenever there is a break, a strike, or a holiday, a feeling that you have been wasting your time if you are not engaged in an internship or a certificate course at the moment. Some even engaged in three virtual internships running at the same time, a physical one, enrolling for ten courses, and are still looking for more. 

And because of this pressure, there have been times that, even though I have set out my priorities for this strike, I begin to feel a bit inadequate all over again because I know that I am not doing a lot of things that my mates are engaged in. But I have tried and am still trying my best to fight this mindset.

I know that just like I used to feel, there are certain people out there who are under this pressure to do something, anything, so as not to feel lazy and unproductive.

And I want to say this, it is necessary to spend this time doing something productive – in fact, if you have not been, then I am shocked at how someone has been able to spend about 80 plus days doing absolutely nothing. But if you are not among those who honestly enjoy doing what they are doing, who are learning these skills and participating in these internships because they are honestly curious about them,  but are among the group of people that are not very thrilled with what they are doing, stuck in the web of the pressure of having to perform, then I have a bit of advice for you. Step back. Breathe. And think.

If you have been engaging in something, learning a particular skill for a while, or any other thing and you hate it but are still doing it because you think that the best of the best are doing so, I think it is time to leave. There is courage in knowing the time to stop and leave something that you do not enjoy doing. You have no one to impress and you have to realize that this life is not one big competition.

If you are about to enter into something not because you think you would enjoy it or because you are genuinely curious about it but because of social pressures, then don’t. It is not worth it. Go and engage in that which you would enjoy even though it appears to be less glamorous than the other.

And, despite all that I have said, do ensure that you are productive, but use your own measure, not that of any other person or a system. No one knows how much longer this strike would last, and if you have been using it as an opportunity to one-up your peers, you need to slide back and realize that you are probably not much better than the person that has been wasting away his or her time.

If you have abandoned something you enjoyed because it did not appear as glamorous as what you saw on Linkedin, or because you felt that it would not make you look much different from your peers, then go back to that. Life is short. Do that which you enjoy.

But if you have been doing all that and loving every ride of the way, fuelled intrinsically and not extrinsically by the pressure of social media or peer pressure, then go on. Reach for the stars but remember that the ideal person that you want to become should be the only person that you measure yourself up against.

This is difficult to do, I know. Social pressure is difficult to resist and I know that the only reason why I have been able to be as laid back as I want to is that, due to the strike, I can prevent myself from seeing that which I do not want to see, can simply switch off my phone and do not have to see those achieving feats physically as I would once the session begins. But please note, and this is something that I am working on making my mantra,  that never should you let yourself be swept up, forget your achievements, and feel like a failure because your level of success is perceived objectively as lower than any other person. You are running your own race, on your own track, and spending your time trying to be like some other group of people is a terrible way to waste life.

Recently, I saw a flier that asked, ‘What are you doing with your ASUU time?’ and I have to say, after a relatively long time, I am finally using it to do what I actually want to do, not just what I feel pressured to do, and being very productive at it too.

I hope you have been doing the same as well.

                                                                                                                 

Ever since the pandemic began, I have read quite a lot of productivity and self-help books. And while most of them have different approaches to different subjects, a lot of the time, there are a few things that they say repeatedly; a few things that, judging from how many books repeat the same thing, are almost more than essential for success in life.

Certain essentials like these are: 

1. Planning of one’s days, which is something that I am proud to say I am getting more and more consistent with, 

2. Waking up on time to do certain routines, which is one topic that is a bit controversial in the self-help world, but that would be a topic for another day, 

3. Being organized and 

4. Being accountable, most preferably to an accountability partner.

Now, I have to say, some of the authors that talk about this aspect of productivity; in fact, a good number of them, are very vague when they come to this subject area, in the sense that you never really can tell, even though this is something that they advise readers to do, that they do this. But I will get to that later.

So, in essence, what or who is an accountability partner? 

This is someone who keeps you on track of your goals; and who you give an account of how far you have gone with the goals that you have set out for yourself whether on a daily, weekly, or a monthly basis. He or she is also someone who sometimes m has the power to dish out some form of punishment if you fail to accomplish the tasks that you have set out for yourself.

The reason why having an accountability partner is so popular amongst productivity experts can be perfectly captured in this statement given by Simon Sinek in an interview on ‘Capture Your Flag’:

“…as social animals, we feel the responsibility to each other… you can wake up in the morning and always come up with an excuse why you should not go for a run today, always. Sometimes I am good at it, sometimes I am not, but when I have a running buddy and they’re waiting for me, I don’t want to let them down, I don’t want to ruin their run… so the whole point of having other people invested in whatever work you’re doing means that you’re more likely to do it not because of you, but because you do not want to let them down…”

Productivity Youtuber Hafu Go in one of his videos titled: ‘How this morning routine changed my life’, shows a practical way in which one can function with the help of an accountability partner. According to him, every morning, by 8:30 am, he has an accountability call. This means that he places a call to his accountability partner, and then they tell each other all that they plan to do for the day.

According to him, if he is late or misses the call, he has to pay a hundred dollars to his accountability partner. The same goes for the partner as well. Also, he says that at the end of the day, they also place another call to each other to check whether they accomplished all that they had set for the day.

In his book, ‘Atomic Habits’, James Clear provides yet another version of how one can use an accountability partner to sustain habits that one wishes to build. He makes mention of something called a Habit Contract which; according to him, is a verbal or written agreement in which one states one’s commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if one does not follow through. Then one can proceed to find other people to act as one’s accountability partners and sign off on the contract too.

He also provides his view on why having an accountability partner is great for success. According to him, we are always trying to present our best selves to the world. We care about the opinions of those around us because it helps if others like us. This is precisely why getting an accountability partner or signing a habit contract can work out so well.

Of course, if I begin to give details of all the productivity gurus in the world and what they have to say about keeping accountability partners, I will never be able to finish this book. The logic of having one is simple. It is easy to let ourselves down; too easy, at times, as I can tell from experience. But when you have someone or a set of people who hold you in some regard, it becomes difficult to let them down, unless you belong to that very rare group of people who do not give a care in the world what other people think about them. The idea is a very nice one, and it can be great for one’s productivity if one can get a committed accountability partner.

But the question and one that I have seen no one address is; how plausible is it to have a committed accountability partner? How possible is it for every person who wants to grow to have someone to call twice a day to tell what the person wants to do and how the person plans to do so and then give a report as to whether the person did so?

It is not, unfortunately. Even in one’s closest group of friends, it is difficult to have a person with the same plans as one has, and that is willing to develop this habit of always being accountable to the other person and vice versa.

And this is not just an opinion, it is an objective fact. In an ideal world, every person will find it easy to get another person to grow together with, but for some people, probably even most, this is not the case.

At first, I thought that I was the only one who was finding it difficult to find an accountability partner. I had tried telling some people, including family members and friends, of my need to have an accountability partner, but no one was really in for it. And I thought that I was the only one with this dilemma. 

But then, in every video that I watched that had something to do with accountability and the importance of having an accountability partner, I noticed that there were a lot of people in the comments section who seemed as perplexed as I was on how to find an accountability partner. Even amongst the few people that I had in my Whatsapp contact list, I saw a bunch of people who were practically begging for people to be their accountability partners on their statuses.

Clearly, I was not the only one that was having problems with this area of productivity, and the fact that I could not find any to assist me was telling on my productivity as being committed to a particular habit that I wished to perfect was something that I found increasingly difficult to do.

But then, one day, after finding out that there was one of my friends that had somewhat of an accountability partner and then asking the person to be mine, only to receive an unenthusiastic response, I began to wonder, was the traditional, literal meaning of an accountability partner the only way to get myself to be accountable?

 Surely, there had to be another way, surely I could not be doomed just because I could not get that one person that was willing to watch over my life for me and make sure that I was doing all that I needed to. Of course, if I could get such a person, my life would be great, but did the fact that such a person was unavailable mean that I was just going to give up on accountability all together?

But then, after some thinking and praying, I began to receive some divine insights. And then I realized something, I was taking this accountability partner thing a bit too literally. An accountability partner did not have to be one person, it could be a bunch of people for different sorts of habits that you may want to work on. It could be a team, a club, a checkmark drawn across a calendar each day, or an app that tracks the days that you do a particular thing. An accountability partner could be any group of people or anything. The point is that it had to suit my goals and be the push that I needed to achieve the things that I needed to achieve.

Going a little further on the interview that was given to Simon Sinek, when the interviewer asked him who his accountability partner was, I expected him to mention the name of some guy that he had that kept tabs on him, just like the Youtuber had, but then he gave this reply.

“I have my team. I have the people who have taken bets on me and risks on me, anybody who says I believe in you and they just leave me to go do it… my publisher says, see you in a year, and well, I have to give him something really good to prove to him that it was worth it.”

These were his words. He did not say, “Yeah, well, I have my friend Jimmy over here. He has been the person that I have been talking to twice a day for the past five years, and the fact that I communicate with him is the reason that I am as successful as I am today.” All he did were list a bunch of people that he worked with, calling his team and his publisher as his accountability partners, and then mentioned a very vague group of people, who I do not know where to categorize into. He did not have the sort of accountability partner that I had been looking for, and he had managed to be as successful as he is today.

I had been going about the wrong way in my search for an accountability partner for a very long time.

THE USE OF DEVICES FOR ACCOUNTABILITY

Even before my eyes were open to understanding that there were several things that were actually serving the purpose of being accountability partners; there were a lot of apps that served the purpose for me. Of course, the one thing with apps is that they can never really be substituted with humans, as you can decide to close your eyes and delete an app every time that it got on your nerves, or ignore the open gaps on your phone’s calendar where you did not check off certain boxes that you should have checked off, indicating that you may have missed some days of a habit.

But one thing that I have found is that if you put your mind to it; your apps could serve as your productivity partners. They have worked for me sometimes too, like during:

·        times in which I had downloaded exercise apps and was determined to finish the entire 90-day exercise programmes, not ending till I was done,

 

·        the periods that I have been determined to sustain the streaks on the Bible app on my phone,

 

 

·        and times in which I made sure that I reached the level of a champion on the app that tracked the amount of time that I spent on my phone, especially on unproductive apps, and almost completely cut off all of my social media as a result,

 

·        and that time that I used the study bunny app to ensure that I read for some hours every day- although I have moved from the app to Study YouTubers.

In fact, upon further research, I have found that there are productivity gurus that do not subscribe to the typical accountability partners I sought for and have found ways of keeping themselves accountable, ways that have been just as effective as having a person to report to.

They are:

1. Habit Tracking:

One of the ways that a lot of the productivity gurus use is a means or method that Cal Newport calls “the chain method” in his book, “Deep Work” and something that James Clear calls a “Habit Tracker” in his book, “Atomic Habits”.

This is a very simple way to keep yourself accountable and it works in a way that keeps you willing to go on when working towards a particular goal by ensuring that you do the hard but necessary things daily. This is how to make effective use of a habit tracker or a chain or a streak:

a)     You need to use either a calendar or a little book with gridlines.

The one to use depends on whether you want to track just one habit or many habits. If you want to track only a habit, like perhaps studying daily, I would suggest that getting a calendar and ticking off days that you read would be effective. But if you would like to track multiple habits, I suggest that a gridded book would do just the task for you. In that way, you can write the days of the week on one edge, the activities that you would like to do at the other end, and then tick off the days that you did each of the activities, ensuring that you leave the spaces on the days missed.

b)    Ensure that you limit the use of this to just a few tasks. As the author of Atomic Habits stated, it can get exhausting and demoralizing if you decided to track every single habit or activity that you do daily.

 

c)     If you do not think you would be able to make use of a book, your phone calendar can be effective for the same purpose.

The benefit of using your phone is that it drops notifications informing you of tasks that you have set out to perform and all that you would have to do is to click a button if you have accomplished that task. If you feel that the use of a book would be too exhausting, make use of this. But if you are like me and hate the sound of notifications and have put your devices in the do not disturb mode for years now, this might not quite be the choice that you should go for.

And that is it; it is as simple as that.

Now, during school days, I make use of a gridded notebook to track just a singular habit, the amount of time that I spend reading, using the grids to track hours spent. It is easy for me to keep track of this because a lot of the time, I make use of the 50/10 Pomodoro technique used by study Youtubers and I can just tick or shade after an hour has passed.

 

2. The Progress Journal:

There is another way to use a book and a paper as an accountability partner, and I have to confess, that while this may work for you, it has not been much of a help for me.

It is something known as a Progress Journal. Now, this is not just writing about the goals that you were able to accomplish as most people use the Progress journal for, but according to Cal Newport in his book, “How to Win at College”, the optimal use of the Progress Journal is to list both what you set out to accomplish for the day at the beginning of the day, and then at the end of the day, record those activities that you were able to accomplish. 

The idea behind recording any discrepancies between the work that you set out to accomplish and the work that you actually accomplished is that the thought of having to record in your journal that you accomplished none of the work that you scheduled for the day should be enough to motivate you to do the work that you are expected to do. After all, the fact that it is written down makes it permanent in a sense and no one wants a permanent record of their temporary laziness.

Now, I prefer ticking work accomplished rather than having to use a work progress journal but if you think that this is just what you need, then get onto it. 

But, again, you cannot replace the effect that people have by the use of paper or apps on your phone. As I said before, it is easier to give up on using paper or pen whenever you want but with people, it is far more difficult.

REPLACEMENTS TO THE TYPICAL ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

But as I said earlier, having the ideal accountability partner is just not idealistic for most people. So, how do you get the people element required for you to get work done?

Now, this is one that has been giving me quite a headache, but I think that in some activities, I have finally cracked the code.

Take reading for instance. I love reading, but I prefer novels to productivity or spiritual books, although I have read tons of productivity books. I can sacrifice hours of my days to finish a series of books but with self-help books, I tend to be very relaxed, can get bored sometimes, and tend to take my time. Even more important is the fact that because reading productivity and educational books are not something that a person tends to do on autopilot, I needed to have to exert myself to choose those books instead of the novels that I loved reading. After I noticed that the time I spent on the books I needed to read was depreciating, I decided that I needed a way to sort of compel myself to read at least a book a month, jot down what I had read, and then review the book so that the contents stick to my mind. 

After wondering how to go about that for a while, the Holy Spirit dropped exactly what I needed to my mind. Of course, an online book club!

So, due to the fact that I had received the divine instruction to begin the book club in the fellowship in which I am an executive, I started with it. And one thing that I have noticed ever since I started with the book club is that whilst not every member of the club is as active as I would want all of them to be; because I am the one that manages the club, I am compelled by the forces of not wanting to appear as the most irresponsible and incompetent leader ever, to finish the books and jot down all that I need to talk on before I begin to ask other members if they have also done the same. By creating a group of people, sort of a family, and being the one acting as the leader over them, I have no other choice but to do the needed, not only because of the benefits that reading the books would bring to my life, but because I do not wish to appear incompetent and undisciplined to others.

Again, I have noticed that my spiritual life has had a boost ever since I have become an executive of a fellowship. Not only have I taken on new consecrations, but I am actively working towards building my faith because I understand that I am a leader and I do not want to fail in that regard. Therefore, even on days of weariness, I find myself pushing as much as I can to do the things that I know would boost me spiritually. 

I think that this should be called the power of belonging in a group or a team of people with like interests. Why have only one person to give you the peer pressure that you need to grow when you can have a group of people to do the same thing for you?

HOW TO GET AN ACCOUNTABILITY TEAM

Getting a group of people to serve the purposes of an accountability partner works in different ways.

1.     Groups and Communities: 

 One of such for students is a study group. I do not belong in any formal study groups back at school because I have not taken that to be a priority for me- I mean, the fact that I need to maintain my CGPA is enough motivation for me to ensure that I do the necessary reading, but I believe that it is also a means of getting the accountability you need if the fear of exams does not do it for you.

2.     Online Communities: 

T

 This is also an effective substitute to the physical ones. For instance, if you love to exercise, joining a group chat in which all the participants are expected to report on their exercise regime can do it for you. There are several communities that are available for all sorts of habits and if you only take the time to look, you will find one that suits your needs.

3.     Social media influencing: 

There is another way to do this, an even broader way. But sadly, this does not apply to everybody. If you are like me and you are invisible in the world of social media, this may not be ideal for you.

But if you are, then I know of a woman who makes use of social media to keep herself accountable as she tries to get fit. The rule for this is simple. If you have a reasonably large following, and you promise them that you are going to do a particular thing daily, then that is all the motivation that you need to do that thing daily and announce it to your followers. Any day that you miss doing that particular thing, it will not be a secret that you can just keep to yourself, but you can be assured that the entirety of your followers would be aware of that. And if you think that your self-criticism is bad, wait till you promise to stop doing something to your reasonably large followers, only to end up coming the next day to your followers to tell them that you slid back to your toxic habits. 

There are a lot of YouTubers and influencers that do this, using the fact that they have a large following of people who may sometimes, not be so caring when they feel that they deserve to be frank to the person, to ensure that they keep tabs on what they are expected to do.

One of the most extreme versions of this is when the people not only announce that they have performed a particular habit but actually film themselves doing the said habit.

I think that this is the point in which I do a little introduction to the people that have completely altered how I viewed the limits on human energy and have transformed the way that I used to view reading; Study with Me live streamers.

These are the set of people that, because they have an obligation to the people watching them, have actually dedicated their time to streaming themselves reading long stretches of time at a day, and hence achieving their academic goals. We have people like Heleen of Study Vibes, Ari Horesh, A Studies, and James Scholz- who managed to read 12 hours a day for an entire year- think about that for a hot minute. 

As Heleen once confessed in one of her videos, she is fully aware of the fact that without the channel, she would not be reading as much as she does currently. Of course, this is a scary concept even for me, but you have to admit, if you can pull it off, there is no better way to push yourself to do the needful for your life.

When I am talking about social media, this will also be mentioned as a great way to show the world that social media is not just a toxic platform where Gen Z’s go to let the last of their brain cells die, compare themselves to others and quarrel over irrelevant topics.

Even if you have a small following, if you think that this is the way to let yourself get on track with your habits, then get on with it.

I had this in mind when I decided to start this online diary. Having promised that I will be releasing a personal growth diary at least once a week, this is enough to ensure that I grow and study books on what I need to do to help me grow.

Now, we individuals are fickle-minded and find it difficult to stick to habits on days that we lack motivation. But if you can find your way to keep yourself accountable, whether it is through the traditional way or some innovative way that you have thought out for yourself, it is a great way of ensuring that you do the needful and move forward in life.

Now, before I end this long piece of prose; before you go about to start looking for a mere man to be an accountability partner for you, let the Holy Spirit be your accountability partner, especially when it comes to the spiritual things. If you are sensitive enough to pay attention to his thin, small voice, you will notice that he is constantly ever ready to push us to do the things that we are expected to do, things that we need to work on, not just to edify ourselves, but also God in heaven.

REFERENCES

1.     Atomic Habits by James Clear.

2.     Deep Work by Cal Newport.

3.     How to Win at College by Cal Newport.

4.     Simon Sinek on How Accountability Partners Keep You Committed: https://youtu.be/qd10-f9bzu0.

5.     How this morning routine (quickly) improved my life: https://youtu.be/Aj-LeB3ioGw.

 

 

 

In every human brain, we have what is known as the limbic system, a system, which, according to Chris Bailey in his book, “The Productivity Project”, is the emotional, instinctual part of your brain that includes, amongst other things, our pleasure centres and pushes us to give in to emotions and temptations. It is the limbic system that pushes us to spend hours on social media or television, even with the awareness that there is something important that we need to do. It pushes us to procrastinate, to wait till the very last minute before we begin to engage in tasks. It makes us go to parties, indulge in food, and so on.

The limbic system is only interested in the activities that are deemed as pleasant to us at the moment. It does not consider the future or any other thing other than our present comfort.

In contrast to this is a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex, which is the logical part of our brain that pushes us to do certain things that result in our productivity and development. It is the part of our brains that plans, calculates, and makes decisions. It innovates and finds solutions for problematic situations and is located in the front of our heads. It is also the core of creative thinking and innovation, which is what is responsible for our plans on how we can improve any aspect of our lives. The thoughts that occur inside our prefrontal cortexes ultimately define who we are as individuals.

It requires discipline for us to allow the prefrontal cortex to lead us and guide our decisions, for most of the time, giving in to it means letting ourselves do the hard things, the things that most of the time, we would rather not do.

And these two systems undergo a series of battles every single day with every single action or decision that we take, with the limbic system pushing us to relax and cave in to our desires and cravings and the prefrontal cortex trying to push us into making the right and logical decisions. The constant struggle for dominance between the emotional limbic system and the logical prefrontal cortex is what guides the decisions that we make throughout the day. It is also what makes us human. 

With every decision that we take, one of these systems takes dominance over the other. When we choose to move to the next episode of a movie instead of studying, that is the limbic system taking over. But when we decide to wake up early despite the urge to ignore the alarm; that is the work of the prefrontal cortex.

 But there is no way that one of the systems can be in control for the entirety of a person’s life. No matter how productive we wish to be, there are times in which a system takes dominance over the other and vice versa. The only difference is this, when we let the prefrontal cortex take control more often, we tend to be more successful than those that let the limbic system take control more often.

The major key to productivity boils down to this. Most of the time, we know what we ought to do to be successful, and whilst it is good to read development books, it is not that much of a necessity per se to make a person know that the person has to study to be successful or work hard to earn more. What I believe self-help books do is provide some sort of easier way to get these things done, and provide proven steps to make it easier for people to give in to the demands of the prefrontal cortex.

However, the problem is that the prefrontal cortex is a lot weaker than the limbic system. If we are not actively thinking at any given moment, the limbic system will dominate over the prefrontal cortex, and we will start a mental journey towards comfort. In fact, engaging ourselves with constructive and creative thinking in general, is hard work.

Hence, the limbic system, most of the time, has a stronger hold on people than the prefrontal cortex. This is because it is easier, mind-numbing, to do some of the easier things that it craves, easier to slip in and let loose, to work on autopilot, than to perform the sorts of tasks that are demanded by the prefrontal cortex.

The limbic system in the brain is also what I believe contains what is biblically known as ‘The Flesh’, which is what we Christians know as what pushes us to do sinful actions such as sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, hatred, discord, jealousy, rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, etc. Now, whilst not all aspects of the limbic system or activities associated with it can be said to be sinful, our sinful actions with regard to others do involve the limbic system when they manifest our lack of self-control over the urges of the limbic system. Now, do not get this wrong, the drives targeted towards our present comfort, which is what is associated with the limbic system, are not wrong, but what is wrong is when, as a result of these drives, we perform sinful actions. 

Hence, whilst procrastinating or deciding to take a well-deserved break or a vacation, all actions that are associated with the limbic system, are not sinful in and of themselves, adultery, committed because we do not properly control our sexual desires or false testimony, given out of either fear or anger by a person who chooses to lie and feel good rather than accept the consequences of speaking truthfully are sinful actions which can be associated with the limbic system. 

We all have found ourselves in a lot of situations in which the limbic system has taken control of our brains for hours or even days at a stretch, and as long as we are not sinning or halting ourselves spiritually (such as instances when our limbic systems prevent us from performing certain necessary spiritual activities or letting the limbic system prevent us from moving forward in life), I say that there is nothing wrong with loosening up and giving the gears to it every once in a while. If we used the logical part of the brain all of the time, we would never have fun or let go and do things that excite us because we would rather use that time to work and do activities that are deemed productive.

I have, as part of my productivity journey, been trying my best to do all that I can to make use of my prefrontal cortex more than my limbic system for most of my day, and that has boosted the amount of time that I spend in productive activities and drastically reduced the time that I spend doing things that my limbic system craves, like scrolling through social media or binging movies.

But there are times, though, that, though not in a sinful way, I let the limbic system take over completely. These usually occur during the beginning of every holiday or immediately after the exams, in which I take at least a week to do whatever it is that my heart craves, mostly binging books and movies, and I think, most of the time, that I have more than merited the break. 

But what I have realized is that more recently, I have begun to feel guilty whenever I take a break from my work, even when it is an inevitable break as a result of some social responsibilities.

For instance, this Easter break has been sort of frenzied for me, but not due to work. Not only did my uncle have a big ceremony that took an entire day, but we had guests come over to the house and for the time that they stayed, it was very rowdy. Also, as is routine during the Easter period, we had a lot of outing days, which I made sure I did not miss for the sake of work.

But that was not entirely the reason why I sort of relegated my work to the background, apart from those that I just had to do to get my monthly pay. Truth be told, I let my limbic system take the ride for almost the entirety of the three whole days of Easter, and for that period, not only did I not give any attention to my academics and very little attention to my writing, but I completely disrupted my sleep routine, sleeping and waking up late, even though I am an early riser, eating as much as I wanted, doing whatever it was that felt good at the moment, and generally having a really good time.

Of course, this is common for most people during the holiday season. I would say, as a bit of advice; that people should work intentionally towards having the time to take a big break and have some of the fun that they deserve. Life is short, after all, and not all of our time should be spent working.

But mine was not intentional at all. I did not plan to spend three days doing essentially nothing, it just happened and I took certain questionable decisions that led to it.

For instance, on the night before my three day period of letting the limbic system take gear, I was looking for books related to a particular mental illness that I wanted to know more about in my favourite online library when I stumbled upon a particular book that caught my interest because I remembered seeing such a cover before somewhere. Before getting the books that I needed, I decided that there was nothing wrong in downloading the book (which I later found out was the first book of a series), and then that night, I decided that there was nothing wrong in having a look at it. Let’s just say that I slept way past my usual time that night (which is one thing that I particularly regret, for it had its effects on my being able to find time to do the spiritual activities that I normally do first thing very early in the morning).

And then the next day, it was like that for me. I spent the entire day alternating between being a party usher and food server in my uncle’s ceremony and reading the book. It would have ended that day, but because it was a trilogy, I ended up craving knowledge of how the book ended and spending the remaining two days alternating between low-level work, outings, and the novels. I had a blast those days, even though there was a layer of guilt that I tried to ignore but that did not leave the back of my mind.

But the moment I dropped the novels, the guilt that I had been ignoring hit me like a whirlwind, and I spent a long time pondering on the things that I should have done, that I could have done during those periods that I spent wasting my time on the books. Of course, one of the things that really weighed on me was the fact that the books robbed me of my sleep schedule and hence, the special time that I used to carve out for myself, very early in the morning, for my spiritual activities. That, to me, was the sin of omission, as I had let myself sacrifice a special time that I should have used for the lord, shortening it, just to please my desires.

But then after asking the Lord for forgiveness, I decided to reflect and see whether I could get any life lessons from what had just happened to me. And there were quite a few that I gained from the experience.

1.     There is nothing wrong with planning a time to retreat and get some time off to relax, reflect and have fun. Ever since I started reading self-help books, I have come across a lot of honest authors proclaiming for a fact that they have had moments in which they have felt guilty about taking any breaks or having fun at all. Sometimes, they have claimed that their quests towards total productivity have made them engage in work until they burned out. I for one have heard people warn me a lot of times about the likelihood of my getting burned out due to overwork, and there is a part of me that feels like these three days of madness were a result of some form of burnout as I had been exerting myself for weeks before that point in time. So if you feel as though you deserve a break, by all means, plan the break, take that necessary break and have the time of your life. You will feel, and I can say this from experience, a lot more rejuvenated by the time you get back to work.

2.     Sometimes, your lack of self-control and ability to control the drives of your limbic system can be used by the devil as weapons against your spiritual growth: Although I did not fall into any of the above-listed sins, I did let my limbic system drive me towards choosing fun over a list of activities that I engaged in at night so that I could have some extra personal time with God. But for some of you, it may be that your limbic system pushes you to sin in order to satisfy your flesh and feel good. Remember that as Christians, no matter what, there is a level of self-control that is expected and required of us. The drives of the limbic system can come in form of temptations and overcome them, we need to develop healthy habits of thought (Romans 12:2) and shun thought patterns that cause us to dwell on, and subsequently, act on sinful desires. 

3.     Apart from times when you need rest and need to have some fun, caving in to the drives or desires of the limbic system for most of your days will always lead to negatives consequences: These can come in the form of sin, laziness, lack of productivity, procrastination, which either have negative consequences on our current lives or the life to come. Remember that no matter what it is that you feel, you need to find ways to subdue the limbic system so that you can achieve and fulfill your purpose in life.

 

Disregarding the limbic system can be very difficult. But it is destructive to give into it most of the time. Yes, having fun and placing yourself in a level of comfort and pleasure is good for our wellbeing, but in all, we should ensure that we practice moderation, something that I failed to do during that time. Never let the limbic system be what guides you throughout your days and be guarded against the periods of time when you begin to work on autopilot. Note that even when our limbic system conveys strong motivations to act in a particular way, we still have the ability and responsibility to think and act in a manner that pleases God. 

 

REFERENCES

1.     The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey

2.     Why Emotions Matter - The Limbic System vrs the Prefrontal Cortex by Helina Mellanen. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-emotions-matter-limbic-system-vrs-prefrontal-cortex-mellanen

3.     The Limbic System and Christian Sanctification by Tony Jelsma. https://inallthings.org/the-limbic-system-and-christian-sanctification/