I might be swarmed with many things, but believe me when I say I consider myself extremely lazy. I have been fighting my way through this for the past months and decided to do a little research on how I can combat this. So I collected my findings and devised a way to combat this effectively, and so far my solution has been working for me amazingly well and I thought I should share. The “symptoms” I had to fight were

a. I get very tired quickly during the day
b. I get demotivated half way through my work
c. I procrastinate a lot
d. I overwork myself and burn out easily
e. I get sleepy all the time, because of my sleeping patterns
f. I have not been reading books for a while now

This are the strategies that has worked for me to be extremely productive.

1. Proper Sleep - I realised that because I don’t have a day job i have a scattered sleeping pattern which ends up wearing me out. So I devised a plan to sleep 5-6 hours straight every night from 11pm – 5:30am.

2. Jogging - Every day I have decided that from 7-8pm in the evening, no matter what I am doing I take the time off to take a 500m – 1km Jog. This helps to clear my mind and keep me alert and disciplined.

3. Passive Thinking Process – So I had the mentality that my partners and clients are pushing and pulling me from one thing to another, so I felt that I was burdened to do everything and hence relaxed and slacked on on my roles and productivity. Currently, I have challenged myself to be an achiever, I view every contract, project, and task as a challenge I can complete and do myself without help.

4. Monthly Reading Task - So I had a stockpile of back dated fortune, economist and Forbes magazines I am yet to read, together with some motivational books I bought while window shopping at the mall. So I have now devised a strict timetable on hours I must spend every month on reading, this hours are distributed across 4 weeks. So far I am yet to slack in doing that.

5. Monthly Reward System – At the beginning of the month, that is today, I go through my entire previous month achievements and score myself over 10. If I scored above 8, I reward myself in my own little way. I indulge in not working at all for 1 day, while still adhering to my established rules doing whatever I please.

Do you have your own strategy that works for you? Please do share.

As you grow older, certain things become priorities in your life. You might think you have it all figured out, but sometimes you become deluded by the little success you have achieved in your endeavors. I would agree, that I am guilty of this, and I am working towards fixing my life fully with a focussed goal and a written plan in a business plan format.

Enough self directed motivation pep talk, so whats going on with me? A lot actually, most I cant discuss here due to the confidentiality clause etc, anyway a new E-commerce site in Nigeria has sprung up, pretty cool if you ask me, and well stocked too.

You should check them out. Its name is flegz, and it was founded by a friend of mine. The shop is located in Lagos, provides free shipment within Lagos and their website is at http://www.flegz.com, you should check it out, they might have a thing or two you might be interested in buying. I wanted to write a review, but I decided not too for now.