I dabbled into a lot of things during that time, including but not limited to calligraphy, chess, origami, meditation, yoga, took a writing course on Coursera, and even tried to start a Youtube channel. I went wild with activities, like, literally trying anything I could get my hands on, wanting to do all that I could with the time that I had and the resources that were available to me. Currently, I do not engage in most of the things that I did during lockdown, but I do not regret the time that I used in exploring these hobbies. I was young, ages 17 to 18 at the time, and I could have spent that entire time doing nothing other than watching television and scrolling through social media. So I deem the fact that I engaged in all of the above as nothing more than a plus.

One of the things I dabbled into during that period of time, that shaped the way that period went for me and how the year after went for me was productivity. I stumbled into a self-help book, began reading, and then it became an addiction. Soon enough, I spent most of my time reading all the self-help books that I could get my hands on, both soft copy and hard copy, and even the ones in audio format, which I used to listen to whilst performing house chores. I will give a list of the ones that I have found most impactful in my life in another blog post.

And I have to tell you, there is no way that you can read that many books without having a life transformation. By the time I had dug myself into all of Cal Newport’s books, did my chores whilst listening to Atomic Habits, and went through scores of videos by channels like Alux.com, I became restless with the way that I was living my life, how I was basically being a mediocre and felt the urge to do more, be more.

And so the journey started.

By the time I had read the earliest of Cal Newport’s books, the ones that dealt with succeeding in college, I began to look for YouTubers that could teach me more of the secret hacks to achieving that. I stumbled, not only to channels that talked about hacks and tricks to reading faster and succeeding whilst engaging in other activities, such as that of Elena Handtrack, but I also began to spot ‘study with me’ channels like the kinds of Ari Horesh, James Scholz and Study Vibes, realizing, to the greatest of my surprise that there were people out there that could study for up to twelve hours at a stretch. I will drop another blog post in which I explain my experience with engaging in those sorts of programs, and how I have been able to maintain a first-class CGPA in law as a result.

And then, by the time I began to indulge in books that dealt with health and the impact it had on the brain, I began exercising. Furthermore, I began to study books that dealt with the negative effects of social media, and soon, I had deleted most of my social media accounts, save Whatsapp, and had downloaded an app that tracked the amount of time that I spent on my phone daily.

There were several other books with their own messages but by around July to August 2020, I had begun:

• Journaling

  My first ever journal

  
  
• Planning my day (Making to-do lists)
• Habit tracking
  
  
  
• Meditating
• Caring more than I used to about my hygiene
• Yoga
• Trying to maintain a strict sleep to wake up time of 10:00 pm to 5:00am
• Reading self-help books almost every day
• Reading the academic books that I had abandoned up until that point
• Working on my typing so that I could be efficient as a writer

Of course, I was not as consistent as I wanted to, being more consistent in things like exercising (till I experienced an exercise burnout) and reading than other things like meditation, which I found to be difficult and pointless most of the time I tried it.

But they were the hallmark of the changes that I experienced during that period, and they gave me the necessary discipline that I needed at the time.

But then, months after the lockdown had ended, the strike was called off.

And then came the downward spiral.

But not all was lost. For one, the fact that my exams were slated for just a month after the strike was called off gave me the motivation to study for an average of eight to ten hours every single day. But then, with so much of my time invested in just one thing, I dropped so many of the habits that I was trying to build.

For one, I reinstalled Youtube for the 'study with me' channels and found that it also served as a great way to get my body relaxed after so many hours spent studying. Then, I dropped exercising because I also happened to be doing the long stretches of studying during the period of time in which I was engaging in the annual twenty-one days of fasting and prayers in my church and I was certain that if I exercised as well as all the pressure that I was putting in my brain, I was going to have a terrible burnout, probably collapse in the process.

Furthermore, with the beginning of the school year, one in which the school management all so generously decided to compress two academic years into a single year, I found it difficult to continue with all the habits and hobbies that I had built up.

I want to make it clear that discipline was never gone, per se. With the knowledge that I could exert myself the way that I did when I was doing ten hours of reading in a day, there was no going back on that and the fact that I never let my academics go anywhere but higher, plus began to engage in so many other extracurriculars as well, was only proof of the fact that I never lost it.

In fact, by November last year, I gave myself an even stricter sleeping schedule, sleeping by around 9 to 10 and waking up by three so that I could chip in at least an hour and thirty minutes to three hours of spiritual activities like reading the bible, spiritual books and praying (am still very much consistent with that) and two hours of reading before heading off to school. So I was working just fine and there were only a few times that I tried to draft implementation intentions, habit trackers completely forgotten.

However, we are back on strike after only a year of normal schooling, and I am back to reading self-help books and reexamining my habits.

And boy, do I have some work to do.

For firsters, I have realized that I have been working on autopilot, just letting myself venture into things without even sitting down to consider what I was doing, and hardly ever planning my day. Sure, I planned them at the back of my mind sometimes, but there is nothing that compares to actually being able to sit down and properly structure the day before beginning. I realized that because I never structured my day, I ended up either having disorganized days, or days in which I would end up forgetting to do the one thing that I had set out to do. The most painful were the days that would end with me wondering what I had actually achieved, knowing that I had been busy but not being able to point to one achievement that I had gotten as a result.

And then I realized how much I have backtracked in terms of my fitness. Just recently, I engaged in just two days of intense workout and was rewarded with an additional two days of not being able to climb up the stairs without wincing in pain with every step I took, which put me off exercising for a while.

There are a lot of things that have changed in me ever since I put a hold on personal growth. Sure, there are places that I have improved, but there are so many habits that I know that if only I had maintained, I would have become so much more of a better person than I am at the moment.

Why am I telling this long story?

Well, I once again have free time on my hands, although, due to the fact that I have matured into an adult and have a lot of online opportunities plus a bank account, I am more engaged than I used to be back then, and I have decided that I am going to become more intentional about my personal growth, both physically and spiritually.

As a result, I am going to be detailing, at least once a week, on how things are going for me, on this journey of growth that I am retaking. It is going to be difficult catching up on a lot of things that I want to catch up on, things that should have been second nature by now, but then again, I cannot let myself fall and remain on the ground. I am rising. It is going to be difficult, but I know that in no time, I will be up on my feet once more.