Redirecting your life with limited resources

I am approaching the age of 30. I am writing the same articles I wrote last year for the purpose of redirecting my life with limited resources I have. I know that just writing is not enough, and I am actively trying to commit, but my mind is scattered.

I am only human, and sometimes all the work just overwhelms me.

I didn’t know being an adult was this hard. I feel like my days will come, but I really need to work hard and apply my strategies on time.

I can only imagine how amazing my life could be if I can just achieve my life goals, and these dreams excite me, but taking action is hard. It is hard because life goes on, I have my responsibilities, and I don’t have all the time in the world.

I understand how hard it can be to achieve success now.

Stolen Focus

Recently, I was dealing with focus problems at work. I was simply not able to focus at all. I was standing in front of the computer doing nothing all day, not even my personal stuff. That was horrifying because even though I was on time to deliver my tasks, this feeling of wasting my time greatly easily started to build up in time.

My friends told me I might have ADHD. I highly argued because they don’t have any right to tell such a bold phrase without the license to do so.

Then months passed. I became a bit depressed, although only my roommates were able to feel it because I didn’t want to socialize at all with them at home. Besides that, I didn’t even see the problem.

But I was becoming lazier and lazier day by day: when I lay down on my bed after work, I didn’t even feel like going to the kitchen to make tea.

I, finally, decided to do something about it. First idea was to read non-fiction books that could help me resolve my problems. I went to a bookstore and picked some books according to my needs. The first one was Stolen Focus.

Stolen Focus was a book explaining the reasons rather than giving to-do’s. I was disappointed at first, but then I realized this book is really good. Narrative is good, the layout is good, all the studies and chapters are well integrated and simplified.

I learned from this book that multitasking is an invention for computers and we are not obliged to be one. Life’s speed has increased, but our brains are not eligible to progress that fast. You can find your flow only when your creativity is triggered. How does social media affect our focus? Why has ADHD started to become a big issue nowadays?

Knowing these helps me have more conscious control over my decisions. But even before that, it helped me to feel okay with myself.

Read my article here: Multitasking is a Human-Crafted Tale

Then, I started to do some little practices. What I did was simply try to build small habits to make myself more efficient, so that I would be more independent, detached from distractions, and ready to focus on work. These were quite simple, like reading books first thing in the morning before even washing my face, writing my articles on a regular basis, folding my laundry immediately after I collected them, not leaving the dishes for the next day, not neglecting my night creams, etc. These little practices first helped me get the ropes back on my hands, and having little control over my decisions helped me focus a bit better at work.

Atomic Habits

I knew about practices in Atomic Habits. I had been applying them in my life before. But still, I needed confirmation on my instinctual behavior on building habits. So right after Stolen Focus, I decided to read Atomic Habits.

This book is really good. It is really helpful for those who are struggling to build self-discipline in the first place. It is a game-changer. And I am already applying a few theories from the book that I see how helpful it is.

But, at the time that I was reading the book, I started to believe that this was bigger than I thought, and I got scared. I don’t know if it is the book or me having a breakdown at the time.

I had a final goal of reading all these books: to leave the corporate life for good. My idea is to write through digital media about my experiences and knowledge in my business to build the network first. I had quantitative goals this time because I realized I have just been building my ideas for the last 2 years.

Maybe it was the time when I felt overwhelmed that I had only dreamed about getting engagement through my content so far and hadn’t taken necessary actions at all!

I was definitely dedicated to be successful this time, but I believe I started to feel the weight on my shoulders, thinking all the things ı actually need to do after reading the book.

So I started to slow down. Today, my clean laundry is still waiting to be folded and placed in the wardrobe, I stopped reading regularly, etc.

Break Downs

Sometimes I just want to quit. But I don’t even have anything to quit from.

What I want to achieve is actually something really big but simple: To quit corporate life!

It is not life and death, but doing something you don’t want to do for the rest of your life simply because you don’t know any other way and you’re not rich is kind of frightening!

I know this process has its own challenges and it is always up to me not to give up.

I am not! I am not giving up.

I’m there for myself to help me!

I just accept that there could be ups and downs, and that’s it. Yesterday, I will be folding my laundries. It is not the end of the world.

And day by day, I will redirect my life in a direction that makes me happy :)