My Productivity Pact

I don't know about you. Perhaps you are the epitome of perfection and productivity. (Not to offend you but seriously you've found my blog and are actually reading it so I doubt that a little bit.) Maybe you have never had this issue and have never looked at yourself and realised 'Wow I don't do anything ever'. I am a collector of things, a hoarder of thoughts, a watcher of experiences.

Have you ever been to StumbleUpon? Or perhaps like me spent hours of time on StumbleUpon? Read the cool list, or the instructions for a craft or the recipe of a divine looking cake. Stopped for a brief minute and thought 'Hmmm... cool', maybe even gone so far as to click the 'Like' button (as if by doing so you were saving it to come back to it another time), then clicked Stumble to move on to somebody else's record of something they've actually done. Tell me, no really please tell me, what has that stumble done for you really? Are you enriched?

I don't claim that stumbling around unto the stumble topics of psychology or history you don't in fact pick up new information that may in fact be enriching in its own right. Even there, however, you have likely picked up only the information from another person's blog. Did you stop to check their references or their recommended books? I doubt it, though forgive me I am very much projecting my own self onto you.

I don't do it. I never do it. I have read three quarters of a book this year. As in the entire year. No I'm not kidding, though I'm also not counting romance novels which I go in and out of but I've likely read close to 50 of them this year. What book have I been reading? The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. Actually. I just lied I've also read Sense and Sensibility - which while 'romance' I couldn't ever group Jane Austen in with my other non-book romances.

Fair enough. I mean I study engineering - maybe I don't have the time. Likely I shouldn't however truth be told I don't work hard enough on that either. I just don't do stuff. I will waste hours just looking at things other people are using their time for. A Photoshop tutorial advertising this takes 30mins to an hour... I look at it and know I have just spent the hour that could have been spent achieving that end state looking at 50 different tutorials and doing none of them.

So I have reached the point where I am making a productivity pact with myself. (I'd claim productivity pact to be my own term however its alliterative use of buzz words means somebody out there has likely come up with the same phrase before me. Just the same I invented it independently.) This productivity pact is to enable me to look at myself and see things I have done. To hopefully avoid the sense of psychological paralysis I often feel when I look back on my week on a Sunday and think 'what the hell have I been doing?'.

I solemnly swear to do something productive. Whether it is school assignments, Photoshop, craft, cooking, reading, writing, blogging, exercise, thesis, photography or any combination thereof. In a documented and intentional manner. Every day for the next month.

I know you  are looking at this list and thinking. Is she for real? That is pretty much every day life. Pretty much. I want to be a proper human, one with something to show for myself. I need to stop bemoaning my state of nothingness and get in and get stuff done.

I WILL BECOME PRODUCTIVE.