The colored dots productivity system
When I started working full time, I had a lot of time on my hands. I didn’t have assignments deadlines to meet or exams to study for. I wanted to start using my time to be productive. Shortly after, I came up with 4 areas that I wanted to work on. They were as follows:
- Health
- Career
- Adventure
- Personal Growth
However, it was really hard to keep myself motivated and work on all of that after a long and tiring day. I kept slacking off.
I wanted to change this. To keep myself accountable, I designed a system that I named the four colored dot system. At the beginning of every month, I used to draw out a calendar. And the aim was to get 4 colored dots every day. Each color signified something.
Red
It signifies health. It meant that I did some sort of exercise to keep myself physically active. It was either running or doing a home workout.
Yellow
It signifies career. This would usually involve either reading a textbook on topics that I want to learn more about or keeping up with my online courses.
Blue
It signifies exploring or adventure. This would usually involve doing something new that I’d never done before (like exploring a new café or a new neighborhood) or working on my hobbies.
Green
It signifies growth and for me, that was reading books.
This system kept my accountable. I didn’t want to miss out on my dots. If I had a busy day and didn’t have time to do everything to get all my dots, I would do the “less intense” version of everything. I would read just one page from my book or just plank for one minute or watch one video from my online course. Just keeping this routine going everyday, I was able to form strong habits. I learned this trick from Atomic Habits by James Clear. Highly recommend that book if you haven’t read it yet.
I hope this system is useful to all of you in some way. Reach out if this works for you! I would be happy to learn that it helped you in some way!
