On war, procrastination, work-life balance, and getting back in shape

Five hundred sixty-five days of war have definitely had a massive impact on everyone in Ukraine. They brought stress, anxiety, fear, and uncertainty, and they still do daily. We've all experienced the mood rollercoaster riding at tremendous speeds, and having ups and downs dozens of times per day have become a norm. It is a matter of time before such a mental state starts affecting your?productivity, focus, and overall well-being. I have recently found myself on that downward trajectory that stubbornly didn't want to turn upwards.

This is a short reflection on what helped me quickly turn things around. I'm writing this partially for a selfish reason to capture the achievement but also with the thought that someone might be going through similar issues and find this helpful as a trigger for change or a point for contemplation. This write-up is a reminder that small but essential things, done consistently and combined with eventual self-reflection exercises, are a great combo that can rapidly make a lot of positive impact.?

While reading, you might feel this text might belong on Facebook or Instagram rather than Linkedin, a professional network for work. Still, at the end of the day, our work, life, mental and physical states are so interconnected that the line between them is relatively thin, and one can invisibly but steadily impact another. Moreover, this story is about returning to productivity and finding motivation on multiple fronts, including work. I feel it's enough for this post to fall into the "professional" category.

So here is how the story goes. It's not that I have been at a point of great depression or felt I needed outside help. It was just a feeling that the quality of life had not been at a level where I wanted it to be lately. I could be scrolling social media for hours with no real value or being entertained, slowed down on the reading, was saving the critical work tasks for the last minute, multitasking (a lot), and working on things I wasn't sure would bring good outcomes. Most importantly, I was so distracted with my phone, work, and news that it affected the quality of the time I would spend with my family (I have a 2-year-old), my friends, or my dog.?

I'm not sure what made me push a "pause" one day and realize I wanted a change, but I'm very happy that it happened. Sitting in the parked car on a Sunday afternoon, I opened the Notes app and started listing things that bothered me. Ultimately, putting thoughts on paper made up 80% of the work. For starters, listing them meant being honest with myself. Secondly, the idea of how simple things can have such a tremendous impact on life quality has made it easy to execute on the improvement plan later.?

Here is what I wrote (with slight modifications and comments so it's easier to read for someone but me). This was just a brain dump exercise, so the output is kind of random and poorly structured.

• Limit YouTube videos watching to 2-3 hours per week. I haven't watched anything interesting lately, but have spent too much time there.
• Get back to time limits on Instagram. I've had those set for quite a while but lately started overusing that "Ignore for Today" feature.
• Learn something new daily, and devote 30 minutes to personal development.
• Have a plan for the day in the morning and follow it.
• Learn Spanish 30 minutes per day. (Yep, I do learn Spanish partially to keep my brain working and because I had some pre-war travel plans where it could come in handy. I'm still optimistic it will happen one day.)
• Replace social media with books. Get back to my yearly reading goal (I used to read at least 12 books per year but had problems prioritizing books over the digital content recently.)
• Get back to drinking coffee 3 times per week. (Again, a long time ago, I figured out through experimentation that this is good for me and that having more would impact my training process, sleep, and overall condition, but I did start to ignore those rules quite recently.)
• Check the news 3 times per day instead of real-time monitoring. Nothing is happening there that could not wait; you can not directly influence what is happening in 99% of the cases.
• Don't drive & text. This is dangerous, especially when my family is in the car. Again, all the work messages or news can wait. Those are less of a priority than safety.
• Do not multitask or get distracted during the meetings. If you have accepted and come to the meeting, it should mean it's essential, and you should pay attention and respect other's time.
• Sleep 7-8 hours per day. This is good for everything that you do and can have a massive impact on productivity and mood.
• Do not train more than 4 times per week. (I've been overutilizing sports to get rid of stress lately, which resulted in a pretty bad injury I had to recover from and more stress.)
• Return to the balanced food behavior (Same as coffee; I used to have the discipline and what one would call a "flexible" healthy lifestyle that worked great, but for some reason, it all got out of hand one day.)
• Recovery is as important as training. Dedicate time for mobility exercises and foam rollers, 15 min per day. Get a massage one time per week.?
• If you read business books, try to apply the knowledge at work; otherwise, it's a waste of time in many cases. Things get forgotten right after you read them.
• Be more proactive at work, and take your time with tasks. Only work on items that make sense. (I didn't have much problem with this historically, but vacation season and an overall IT business slowdown due to the struggling world economy made spending more time on strange, non-important stuff more straightforward.)
• Always be honest and open, and try to make things simple when talking to clients or colleagues. Simple things are the best.
• Finish the introductory military training course. (You have to be prepared for anything these days in Ukraine.)
• Brush my dog 2 twice per week (I have the best dog on the planet, a little toy poodle whose hair requires a lot of attention, which I have again been ignoring in favor of the work tasks and social media.)?
• Spend quality time with my 2-year-old daughter - no phone or laptop when I'm with her. She'll never be 2 again, and I can miss a lot of precious moments that I will regret later. You never know what happens tomorrow and whether you can spend that time anymore. (Luckily, I'm not in the trenches yet, but it can change. Missile attacks can also contribute to a higher risk of death. Besides, many other things can go wrong daily, even in our pre-war world.)

That's it. That simple. When I was done, I was stunned by two things: how long the list was (meaning that I had a lot to work on) and how trivial the items were (meaning that I could start living a better life tomorrow by working on at least one bullet point). This idea served as a good trigger for execution and a motivating factor to keep things going for quite some time. I usually have no problem with execution when I know "why." And I'm sure this is the case for many people who only need a clear goal to keep things going.?

A few practical things helped me get many bullet items crossed, resulting in a more relaxed and happy life.

• Have a daily backlog of TODOs. I've been using Trello boards for quite some time to keep the backlog of TODOs. Still, given that it was growing like crazy, it was hard to focus on things and prioritize. I switched to having two boards instead - "Daily Plan" and "TODOs," with the latter being a graveyard for everything I wanted/needed to do at some point.

• The "Daily plan" board combines personal and work items and, by a made-up rule, can not exceed 7 items (hello Kanban). So anything from "Pay the bills" and "Spend 30 min writing this article" to "Get the proposal out to the client" is there. It usually has one "big" thing and a bunch of small items I do in the morning. This gave me an excellent chance to clear the board daily, and I became much more productive and focused. This also follows the "less is more" rule, limiting the stuff I can work on and resulting in a much higher quality of the outputs. The trick is to get the card description very concrete so that you know when you are done and work towards a specific goal.
• I also added some automation later on to clean the "done" items and populate things that come up daily - e.g., "spend 30 min on Spanish", "spend 30 min learning something new," and so on.
• Block time in the calendar. While I'm very open to accommodating my time for the work meetings so it works for colleagues worldwide, it could sometimes get to a place where you can't do much outside of work just because sessions could start anywhere from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. I've begun blocking some calendar times for personal stuff like "Walk the dog" and "Morning training" and treat them as high priority with infrequent exceptions. This helps keep a much better work-life balance and reminds me that life outside of work exists and that it gets a priority.
• "No phone" rule. I either do not take the phone or keep it in the bag while I'm with my loved ones - family, friends, dog. That dramatically changed the quality of time I spent with them. The same rule applies to morning hours and hours before bed - I try to avoid gadgets as much as possible and do something else instead - read, cook, brush a dog, and play with my daughter. The same "no phone" rule now applies to when I'm driving.?
• Books. I returned to reading every day, in the mornings and before bed. I usually cycle between fiction and non-fiction, focusing on fun and emotion rather than learning. For example, my recent lineup was quite diverse, with a Ukrainian fantasy trilogy on werewolves, followed by books on essentialism, fundamentals of software architecture, and 1920s Kyiv.?
• Finally, a list of the less practical but more mental things I keep reminding myself of when dealing with tasks, people, life situations, and problems. Again, it's an excellent exercise to "pause" and evaluate your case. Those are not motivational quotes but rules that make things easier and more relaxed.

1. Less is more in many cases. Keep the focus on essentials.
2. Most things are not critical enough to require immediate reaction.
3. Life goes by quickly, and there are exciting things to do outside of work that you shouldn't save for later.
4. You can't control everything you must deal with. Focus on the things you can.
5. Many people would go through or have the same problem, so it's okay.
6. Do not agree to everything. Only do things you believe will bring results.
7. Simple is great. If you can't explain your solution, it might not be correct. Moreover, you might not fully understand it yourself.

This is the routine I follow now. My well-being improved significantly, my anxiety dropped, my energy increased, and things started to get done again. With years, we all go through transformational changes and reevaluate our priorities, so what works for me today will have to be adjusted or wholly redesigned later. The secret weapon is to listen to yourself, analyze, and not let things pile up to the extent that results in the Avalanche effect, causing more extensive damage.

Lastly, while I was doing "what feels right to fix things," it turns out that smart people have been working out the cure for the problem and secret for better living for quite some time. In fact, some of the rules have undergone quite a few tests over almost 2,000 years. So, if you are curious, numerous books are written around essentialism, stoicism, and their application to modern life. They talk about the same things (and many more) but in broader and more generalized terms. Read, reflect, and pick up what you feel might work in your case.