5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Take Off! (Productivity System)

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, begin! These are the countdowns towards probably one of the most profound moments in life pushing us to achieve our greatest goals. Lately, I've been listening to the audiobook for Mel Robbin's "The 5 Second Rule." I've also heard a couple famous Youtubers recommend this book and even Mel's famous motivational speeches were enough for me to check out this book. She's probably as motivating as Tony Robbinson, the moment you hear or read the body of this book you can immediately pick up how strong and confident Mel truly is.

I recently wanted to try and apply some of the methodology behind the book by first pushing myself to start by beating my alarm clock. Let me elaborate, in the book, Mel describes one of the biggest reasons for her failures towards success starting out was always hitting the snooze button on her alarm and going back to bed beginning a sleep cycle. For me, I personally don't hit the snooze and just enter another sleep cycle which is probably not the best choice because as Mel states the battle between you and that alarm is the most crucial. "You don't have to be a morning person to have a productive morning." I took this phrase to heart and decided that it wasn't my lack of sleep that was causing me to lose in the morning, rather, it was the lack of proper systems to position myself towards success.

Action Point: I took Mel's advice and decided to place my phone in the bathroom. For the next 2 days, I found myself actually not going back to bed. The moment my alarm went off in the bathroom I immediately found myself rushing towards the bathroom to shut it off and immediately commencing my usual routine of brushing my teeth. I didn't need any convincing or persuasion at this point to stay awake. However, one of the biggest experiments I've done was place a sticky note and pencil in my bathroom too so that I would not continue the rest of my day without first planning out what my top priorities for the day are and ensuring that I will for sure by the end of the day make some sort of progress on these tasks or finish some of them. This experiment is still ongoing so I may elaborate more on the benefits of this method in a future blog post.

Tangible Benefits: As a creative thinker myself, I sometimes find myself pacing back and forth or thinking of music on the back of my head. When these moments appear, I immediately begin the countdown and switch activity to something more productive. This has been a gamechanger for me because I actually end up switching tasks and if I start the countdown too quickly my mind will automatically begin switching towards pondering what productive task do I want to begin right now.

A lot of the book definitely gives personal accounts of people whose lives have changed because of this method. Of course, not all of these changes were Cinderella stories or happy endings of sorts but they were of people who found the courage to get out of their minds and act on life. Mel describes one of the most important parts of life is action. A lot of the book brought to life an important part of life: most of the amazing things we do in life are done without second guessing, sometimes our body moves before our mind can even think. When I heard this phrase, I immediately thought of that scene in Naruto where Sasuke saves Naruto and says it wasn't him who decided to do it but instead his body just moved. 

Sometimes our natural instincts and body completes the most incredible feats all because it "just moves." Enough chatter its time for you to finish this reading and do big things, ready? In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!