My Daily Schedule during the Lockdown

Hope all of you and your loved ones are safe during this pandemic. I admit that lockdowns are very boring, yet they are an opportunity to learn and do things that you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have enough time for.

(Follow me on YouTube- RaihanRiad)

My schedule during this lockdown can be divided into three different parts:
i. Morning rituals
ii. Work
iii. Rest
Here is my schedule:

……………..Morning Rituals………………

1. Meditation: I meditate for 15 minutes the first thing in the morning. This prepares my mind to be disciplined for the rest of the day. I know this because whenever I miss my morning meditation I struggle with my will power.
Currently I am using this guided meditation video from Eckhart Tolle as my meditation aid.

2. Listen to an Audiobook: The next thing I do is to connect my earbuds to my phone and start an audiobook. The two next items in my schedule (i.e cleaning room and working out) can be done while I am listening to an audiobook so I take this opportunity to learn about something new.

Currently I am listening to Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. It’s an amazing book that goes deep into all the cutting edge research on sleep. I highly recommend it.

3. Cleaning Room: A clean and well decorated room makes me feel good and aids in my determination to have a great, productive day. So, I take 10 minutes to make my bed, wipe some furnitures and sort scattered items.

4. Workout: While still listening to the audiobook, I get into my workout clothes and open my workout app. I am a huge fan of this app called-“Home Workout “. (They are providing free access to all premium features due to the pandemic, so definitely check it out). Each workout session takes 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Put my phone away: After completing my workout session, I stop the audiobook, disconnect my earbuds and put my phone away in a drawer. I don’t touch it untill my deep work session of the morning (which I will talk about below) is done. This aids in my deep work and keeps me from procrastinating.

5. Take a shower: Elon Musk did an AMA(ask me anything) on Reddit. Someone asked him to share what habits has the largest positive impact on his life. He answered: showering.
I live in a humid country and daily shower definitely helps me feel good for the rest of the day.

6. Wim Hof: I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Wim Hof method. It’s a breathing exercise that has been researched extensively in the recent years . What researchers have found is, it strengthens your immune system through making your blood slightly more alkaline. I highly recommend you try it out! Here’s the link to the official YouTube channel:
Wim Hof method helps me to feel calm and focused. Have you ever kept yourself from breathing for a while when feeling sleepy? It makes you more alert right? That’s how I feel after going through each session of the Wim Hof mehod.

………………………..Work…………………………

7. Deep work: Ok now we’re onto my favorite session of the day. This is what I look forward to everyday. But let’s talk about what deep work is first:
Cal Newport, a brilliant professor and bestselling author of many books, published ‘Deep Work‘ in 2016. Here he talks about the brilliant skill of working distraction free on a cognitively demanding task.

Deep work enables you to learn complex topics and perform your best work. Barbara Oakley, the brilliant professor behind ‘Learning how to learn’, talks about how distractions hampers your ability to learn. She, being a big advocate of chunking, encourages students to minimize distractions while studying.
After three sessions of the Wim Hof method, I sit down to study. I study for 4 pomodoro sessions, each being 50 minutes long. Currently I am studying ‘Tensorflow’ which is a machine learning library. The course I am taking is called: “Introduction to Tensorflow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning “. (If you are interested in taking this course, I recommend you read the Keras documentation first).

8. Nap and Lunch: As I’ve learned from listening to ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker, napping is a good habit to get into. It reinforces what I learned in my study session and refreshes my mind and body for the rest of the day. I take my lunch after waking up from my 20 minutes long nap. This is the first meal of the day for me, my latest being only 8 hours later, which makes me fast for 16 hours everyday. This is called intermittent fasting and it has been linked to many helath and cognitive benefits in numerous research .

9. Some More Work: After lunch, I work for 6 more hours. This is when I write in my blog, or make a YouTube video. If I am feeling particularly lazy that day (which sadly is most days), I work on finishing one of the courses that I’ve enrolled in Coursera. Currently, I’m doing ‘The Science of Success’ by University of Michigan. This is a great resource if you want to learn about how successful people are different form others and how to incorporate those traits in you.

………………………Rest……………………..

10. Entertainment:

Mob Psycho 100

After I am done working for the day, I pick up my phone and watch an anime or watch something on YouTube.
Currently I am re-watching Mob Psycho 100 and my absolute favourite YouTuber to watch is B-rad.

11. Sleep: I try to get 8 hours of sleep every night.

So there you go. That’s the routine I strive to live up to everyday even though it’s a struggle to maintain it perfectly, specially because my sleep cycle is all over the place at this moment.

I’d really like to know how your schedule looks like during this lockdown. Please share in the comments below.

5 habits that can improve your life

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity – James Clear

Habits have always been one of my fascinations. To understand their usefulness, you  have to know about compounding.

What is compounding? Compounding is the accumulation of outcomes. We compound interests in banks. Warren buffet became a billionaire by compounding his profits in the stock market.

Here’s a quote from the man himself:

You can see how much emphasis Buffet puts on reading, on knowledge and on compounding.

Habits lets you harness the power of compounding. You repeat your habits day after day after day. Thus, the outcomes build on top of one another.

Thus, to build muscle we workout at frequent intervals. You can’t just do extreme workout one day and expect to look like Jason Statham overnight.

That’s why experts forbid us to cram everything the night before an exam. Studying regularly, no matter how little, builds the knowledge into your psyche.

If I was successful in intriguing you about habits, then you may be wondering what some of the best habits are. Well, Everyone is at a unique stage of their life so it’s hard to recommend something that might help everyone. I will still try and find the common grounds. Here are my top 5:

1. Studying Smart

Much of our study time is wasted as we don’t know the proper ways of doing it. To really up your game and retain what you learn, you need to know these two concepts: ‘Spaced repetition’ and ‘Recall’.

It’s been proven by various studies that spaced reputation is the best way to study. It’s a simple concept where you revise your study material at frequent intervals. (If you wish for an app to facilitate this, you can use Anki. It’s available for both android and windows-PC.

the second concept is ‘to recall’. It’s famously known as the ‘Feynman technique’, as the legendary physicist Richard Feynman popularized it. The concept is to stop at frequent intervals while studying, and trying to convey what you just studied in your own words. You can do this by writing, saying it out loud, or through teaching someone else. For more clarification, watch the video here.

2. Blocking all entertainment

If you block your favorite sources of entertainment for a certain period of the day, you will be bored. This boredom can be your weapon.

When you have nothing better to do, you will start to seek action in any format. Soon you’ll start organizing your room, reading a book, or maybe writing down your thoughts.

You may go out and talk to someone, finish the project that you’ve been procrastination on, or start doing mild exercise.

No matter what, your day will be more productive than just scrolling through Facebook or watching random YouTube videos.

I recommend, you block all entertainment, which includes all social media, until evening.

3. Three sacred hours

This is my favorite habit. This is a habit that is apparently very popular among famous writers too.

Jordan Peterson used to isolate himself in a room for 3 hours everyday to write his first book.

Steven Pressfield also employs a similar tactic.

Stephen king once told George RR Martin that he writes 6 pages every day. (I guess in his case it’s 6 sacred pages! 😉)

Neil Gaiman also shares how he isolated himself when he needs to write. I discussed about his technique here.

The idea is simple. Create a list of things you want to get accomplished every day. Maybe you want to practice coding, learn a language, write fiction or read the news. It can be anything as long as it can be done (at least partially) within 25 minutes.

Then keep only 6 of these tasks and remove the others from this list. Every day, at a fixed time, start a pomodoro timer and get all 6 of these done. It will take you only 3 hours and you’ll never miss the things that are most important for your personal/ career growth.

If you think you can’t make 3 hours of space in your schedule, try 2 hours or even just one hour. The important thing here is repetition not quantity.

Also, see if you can make time by eliminating your social media presence.

I elaborate on the 3 sacred hours idea here.

 

4. Working out

We are so used to thinking about exercise as a physical phenomena that we forget its best benefits revolve around the brain. Working out cures depression, makes you more focused and helps you sleep well. Working out has even been linked to better memory. So it definitely should be a habit that you take on early in your life.

 

5. Morning Pages

Julia Cameron popularized this idea in her bestselling book ‘The Artists Way’.

Psychologist Conor Neil, in his TEDx Talk (with over 2million views!) advises journaling to increase intelligence. He is not the only psychologist whom I have heard being an ardent supporter of journaling either. Bill Williams, the famous psychologist turned stock trader is another person who pushes morning pages as a crucial factor for success.

The way I suggest you use morning pages is like this-

Write down the events that happened in the previous day. Record your actions and reactions. Once you do that, you’ll start to develop an idea of what you are doing right and where you have room for improvement.

Hope this helps!