🌱 How Shifting My Focus Inspired Change

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You might resonate with this when scheduling your day

For one month, I only worked for my part-time job half of the day & on college the other half.

Ok, that didn’t seem like something “cool” right? But hear me out.

For months I had purposely planned my routine to do several things at once. Especially since I had just begun both my X & Medium journey at the time, I needed to multitask.

Over time though, I started feeling the need to simplify. Especially when I had:

1. Built the infrastructure for my solopreneur Notion business.

2. Was nearly finished with my 2nd semester of college remotely.

3. Had the practice of writing an article a day on Medium.

Having to start my part-time job anyway in February, I decided that I was going to do the following:

1. Put X engaging & setting up Notion products on the back burner.
2. Schedule the whole month to use my morning to do college & the afternoon for my part-time job.

Not only did this help me to focus solely on those two things, but it taught me an important lesson in having a routine.

How I arranged my schedule

In the beginning of February, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

I was already waking up at 6am every day, drinking coffee in the afternoons, and going outside periodically.

But since my part-time job has me being outside all afternoon, I realized that I needed to fit in my college studies in the morning and keep my outdoors time to the afternoon only.

Another thing I realized had to do with my coffee ☕

Recently I had moved my coffee brewing to 1pm so I could continue my Notion biz work on the computer with high-energy. But when I started going outside, this gave me needed energy that coffee couldn’t replicate.

Also, funny enough, I started feeling very drowsy in the morning. So what better way than to switch my coffee to the mornings again!

Everything else with my early morning & late evening routine stayed the same, making me realize just how flexible I was to changing up my morning & afternoon.

Clear mind

My time with having a sole focus on 2 things for 1 month led me to be thoughtful over all I was doing.

Actually, it made me swirl with several ideas that I could try once March started!

Not only that though, but I realized how behind I was on certain aspects of my business. Especially when it came to automation. Like, when friends on X would DM me, I knew they had responded but I had absolutely no time!

Keeping this in mind now has helped me have a big-picture perspective on working smarter.

Finding Simplicity

As I noted before, having several things to get together for my solo biz was wearing me down. So having this opportunity to focus on only 2 aspects of my life has greatly reduced my mental load.

I continued to keep my early morning habits of reading Medium articles, brewing coffee, as well as my evening routine of making dinner & reading.

By simplifying my day to only a few focus’s for a month, I opened my perspective to what I needed to do better in the other areas of my life that I was putting off, which helped me to set up the right automation & routine for when March began!

What I’m doing now

Well, since it’s March 12th that I am writing this, I’m back to my multitasking routine but with a different perspective: having structure.

With my focused routine during February, I didn’t want to lose that mindset when I suddenly had a 1000 things to do for my solo biz.

So here’s what I did in the beginning of March to curve that.

1. Set up my Energy OS template — after designing this Notion template, I never had the reason to use it — until now! This OS has given me so much structure to get a big-picture glance at what I’m focusing on, and helping me to time block efficiently according to my light & deep focus tasks to keep me from becoming burnt out.

2. Switched my coffee back to the afternoon — Now that my schedule has reverted to getting outside ever few hours, having coffee at 1pm helps me keep my deep focus time. Sure, I’ll get a little sleepy in the mornings. But when I do, I just take a run outside!

3. Having time to ponder — with my focus back to having several things at once, I had realized the importance of seeing the big-picture. I do this by extending my walks outside, chilling, and writing notes as a second brain in Obsidian & my plans in Notion to help me not worry if I’m forgetting a task.

Now that I had focused on only 2 avenues in my life for one month, I had itched to get back to multitasking!

Of course though, I don’t just multitask all day. I still arrange my routine based on deep & light work, but overall I have many different focuses between X engaging, Notion product creation, research, landing page design… oh, and I’m starting consulting in April!

Takeaway

When finding a routine that works for you, keep in mind your long-term goals & who you want to be even in just 1 month down the road.

Focusing on a few things at a time is great, but is especially helpful if you already have the infrastructure down for your solopreneur business… or even just your 9–5.

Stay Inspired ⚡

OJ