My story of getting over the unwanted feelings and dissatisfaction settled in while working from home.

Feeling Unproductive

Lately I have been feeling a lot un-productive, even after working for longer number of hours and meeting goals at workplace. It might have occurred to you also specially in and around this pandemic.

It's the feeling when you are spending a lot of time on getting things done. Working on sprint goals and crushing spike work as and when it appears. Still you felt some-how, unsatisfied.

Attention to details

Last Saturday evening I took a break. Sat down and thought about what's happening?

I looked at the events happened yesterday, the day before and whole week.

Then it struck me.

Even though I am working a lot, I am not focusing on pre-planning or recording status for it.

I am not planning the things ahead. Not focusing on what has been done and what I want to do for next week or next day ahead of time.

Planning, tracking

So I started looking into what I really wanted to happen next week.

I created a list of items. Next I was looking for a tool to help me track these items. Thats when I found "Notion".

It helped me record my to do list.

Marked the completion of items as I completed them.

Also dumped my random thoughts, related action items as next to-dos.

This allowed me to focus on what's important.

Removed all negativity about "I still need to work on something" by just recording it as next to-do.

It really worked. It relaxed my mind, considering that I will get it done eventually as I am cruising through current items.

At the end of this week I am looking at the list and getting the feeling of being in control of whats happening around.

Happy ending with new found workflow

I was able to find a good workflow with the help of this simple note taking tool.

The really simple step to note what I wanted to do and review it at the end to see how I have done, gave me sense of completion and achievement that I was looking for.

You could try building your own workflow with Notion or any other tool you like. Initially just simple to-do's and then expanding each to-do into it's own categories of work you do to help organize it better.

I will try to expand on my workflow, and let you know how it works out for me going forward meanwhile if you want to lean more about notion you could do so from https://www.notion.so/Help-Support