Step-by-Step guide on a productive life

1. Take a walk and meditate in order to calm down.
2. Clean your room to set you up for a productive session. Have nothing on your table that you don't need in the next 5 minutes.
3. Open the window, fill the room with fresh air for at least 5 minutes.
4. Place 1 liter of clear water (no soft drinks, energy drinks, juices etc) directly in reach of you when sitting at your desk.
5. Decide which task is the most important task in your life right now. Dedicate 100% of your life to it. Maybe there are other important tasks, but you can't do it all. Use Triage.
• Black: Beyond help. You accept that this is not achievable any more.
• Red: Urgent. This must be done immediately.
• Yellow: Delayed. This can be done after all Red have been processed.
• Green: Minimal. These don't need immediate attention. Re-triage them if conditions changed.
6. Write all of them down in your notebook. Sometimes it is difficult to let a task die. But if you don't focus on those that could be saved, you will lose all.
• Write your tasks and your appointments into your notebook (your quest log), so you don't have to constantly think about them in order not to forget anything important.
• It is motivating to cross off a completed task from your task list.
• Assign tasks to yourself for each day.
• Must do: These tasks are mandatory. You absolutely, positively have to finish them today!
  • Don't take too many "must do" tasks! They are very special. They indicate that if you don't do them today, terrible things will happen. These tasks can not be done on another day. One example is exam preparation. Then every day has a certain exercise sheet as a must do.
  • Most appointments are a must do.
• Should do: These tasks are your bread and butter tasks. If you finish all your must dos and should dos, you can be proud of yourself. This means you lived your day successfully.
• It is crucial that it is not only possible to finish all must dos and should dos each day, but it actually has to be easy to succeed with them. If you don't know if you will succeed, there will be a mental blockade that says: "I can't complete them anyways. Why should I try?"
• Nice to have: You know that you can't possibly do everything today. Even if these tasks were important, the must dos and should dos are more important. And you just have to accept, that maybe your nice to haves will not be finished today. Tough luck.
• It is important to stay realistic. The world will not end. Even if you miss an opportunity, drop a class, botch an exam etc. You can't change the past. You are here in this moment. And now, other things are more important than this task. Such is life. Think of it as a project manager that was just assigned to a project that is at the brink of failure. You have to triage some things out. And this project on the brink of failure might be your life right now. And it is true, you were just now assigned to the position of managing it. (Think of it this way: In the stock market, there is no difference in buying a stock A and in not selling stock A. Only because you might have lost money on stock A because you bought it earlier doesn't mean you shouldn't sell it. If you said "I wouldn't buy this stock again, hell na." Then you should sell it, because you think this stock is trash. And just like owning a stock is the same as constantly actively deciding to continue owning this stock, you were just assigned to this life as project manager. Yes, you were the project manager before, and did some questionable decisions. But now, you are the new^TM project manager. You just arrived on this project where everything goes over and under. And you have to do some tough decisions. Drop this feature. Drop that feature. Concentrate only on the main functionality. Make sure the main functionality is smooth, snappy and bug free, drop everything else. Ship a much smaller product.)
7. Remember to use S.M.A.R.T. goals
• Specific
• Measurable
• "Study more" is not measurable.
• You have to actually measure.
• Achievable
• If something is not achievable, your brain will not even trie.
• Relevant
• Making something look nice is not relevant.
• Time-bound
• Have a time until this task is actually achieved
8. Get your motivation by starting the task that you have to do. It doesn't matter if you really make progress. It only matters that you work on it somehow in order to get motivated to work on it further.
9. Drink coffee, listen to music.
10. Focus 100% on your task. Don't do anything else. In procrastination, we tend to point to all the things that we achieved in the mean time, while we were not doing the thing that we should have done. Don't do that. It is worthless. Only do the thing that you should do. Start with it. Do 8 hours a day. 16 pomodore cycles.