One resolution that I made this month of May, in a bid to take care of my physical body, which I was sure that I had been ignoring and taking poor care of, was to begin exercising. This was one habit that I had developed during the lockdown, but abandoned once I came back to school.

By the time I made the firm resolution that I would try everything that I could to ensure that I never missed a day throughout the month, which was something that I did not do even when I began it in 2020, I decided to think through how I was to execute what I wanted.

Even though I did not sit down to write my plans down, I used some tips that I had learned from reading James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ to achieve the goal that I had set out for myself.

The first thing that I did was to draft out an implementation intention (a plan made before starting a habit on where and when to execute the habit) in my mind. To achieve that, I made use of habit stacking. Knowing that fixing a particular time of the day had never really worked for me all the times that I had tried it out, I decided that instead; I was going to pair it with a habit that I did every day. This, according to James Clear, is known as habit stacking, i.e. identifying a current habit that a person already does each day and then stacking a new behavior on top of the current habit.

So, I decided I would make sure that I had my workout done before I took my bath. A lot of the days, I prepared what I would use to take my bath, and then, with everything in place, I slipped into my workout clothes and began exercising. Eventually, I involuntarily did another form of habit stacking. When I could not exercise just before bathing, most of the time because I had somewhere to go first thing in the morning, I made sure that I exercised before I slept, even if it turned out to be the last thing that I was going to do before bed.

Again, I looked back on the previous times that I had tried to bring back the habit of exercising and see what made me unable to stick with the habit. I found that there was something that I kept on doing that made it almost impossible to go through with my plans to exercise every day. This was because, whenever I exercised, I forgot that my body had not been exercising for a while and needed some time to readjust to having an exercise regime and started out strongly. Hence, on my first day of deciding to exercise again, I was prone to overstretching my body so much that I ended up hurting myself, rendering me unable to walk upstairs or run without wincing for the next two to three days after the hellish workout regime that I put myself through.

Of course, what this meant was that I could not exercise during those two to three days and after that, because of the negative thoughts that would flood y mind calling me lazy for not being able to stick with the habit, even though it was impossible to do so, by the time I had gotten physically capable of exercising, I had lost all the morale to do so.

Furthermore, even if I did not sustain as much harm, even if I could do such exercises, if I could pull such off for about three days, I would wake up on the fourth day with an inexplicable dread for the torture that I was once again going to pass myself through and just the thought of spending the time that I set out to spend torturing my body was enough to make me give up whilst berating myself at the same time for not having enough willpower to do so.

So, I decided I was going to implement the two-minute rule. What the two-minute rule states is that when starting a new habit, one should make sure that it takes less than two minutes to do. Of course, for me, two minutes was too small to accomplish anything, so it was more or less three to five minutes for me. Hence, on the worst of the worst of the days when all the motivation I had to exercise was almost completely depleted, or on days in which the last day’s exercise left my body feeling somewhat sore, I was going to spend only about five minutes exercising. And not only that, my exercises on such days were going to comprise mostly simple yogic stretches, nothing that would leave me out of breath or sweating.

Of all the things that I decided, I think this one was the elixir that made me able to accomplish this mission that I had set out for myself this month. This was because, on days that I just was too unmotivated, or the stresses of the day made me feel incapable of carrying out the workouts that I had set out for myself, or on days in which, for one reason or the other, I was feeling unwell; I did not have to sweat out over the fact that I had to exercise that day. This was because I knew if the worst was to happen, I was going to do some stretching exercises from the app that I used.

In fact, after a particular day in which I had carried a heavy load for a long time and hence, had my shoulders aching for two days, for those two days, all the exercises that I did were merely targeted stretches meant to ease the pain that I felt on my shoulders, neck, and back.

Again, to make sure that I had all the physical cues that were going to push me to exercise, my exercise mat was always lying in the corner of my room and my exercise garments were always accessible for use. In fact, on some days during which I did only stretches, I did not even make use of the regalia, using only my mat and whatever I was wearing as long as it gave me enough leg space to do the exercises that I wanted to do. Again, the three apps that I used to exercise were always staring right at the home screen of my phone, next to some apps that I used almost every day, just like my music app and my bible app.

I have been able to actualize the exercise that I set out to do throughout the month of May. The exercises that I engaged in included power walks, full-body exercises, full-body stretches, thigh workouts, abs exercises, arm exercises, splits training, glute exercises, walking/ jogging for relatively long distances, etc. I did not set out the goal to become ripped because I was terrified of injuring myself and not being able to work out the next day. Hence, the longest amount of time that I spent exercising was about twelve minutes (minus breaks to stabilise my body taken in between exercises which, if calculated, would probably increase the time to about twenty to twenty-five minutes).

The goal for me was just to inculcate the habit of exercising into my life. My long-term goal is to spend about twenty to thirty minutes daily exercising (minus breaks) at least four times a week for the rest of my life and I think that with how I have started, I have garnered enough knowledge and strength of will to stick with the habit long term.

Workout clothes and mat

 

Another strike has fallen upon all University students in public universities in Nigeria for the past few months, with threats of it being extended for more months, even indefinitely.

Now, in case you are not Nigerian and happen to bump into this blog post; or are a Nigerian student in a private university, blissfully unaware of what is happening to your mates on the other side, I feel obligated to say what the strike is all about. It is, simply put, something that people have described as an annual festival in Nigeria in which students do not go to school for months – and then spend the few months that they are allowed to spend in school being shoved faster than they ought to by a school management that generates almost impossible curriculums just so that they can make up for the lost time.

The last time that we as students had such a long expanse of time to spend at home was in 2020 in which, as a result of the strike and the pandemic, we ended up spending almost a year at home – no kidding, and then ended up cramming four semesters in one year (aka two years in one year) last year in the university that I attend, just to make up for the lost time- again, no kidding.

And when we were just about to settle back to a normal school session after the hectic year that we had last year, boom, even before the year began, before we had spent a good month in school this year, another strike came upon us.

All I can say is; I do not want to think of what 2023 or the late quarter of this year, depending on whether or not an indefinite strike is going to be embarked on, would look for me academically. I think I may have a panic attack.

And by the time the strike began, our able government (get your PVC fellas, let's change things), as always, advised the students to engage themselves in quote-unquote productive endeavours. Now, I fully support and am a part of the group of people who agree that forcing students to go out of their way to learn skills during periods of time that they should be in school is nothing short of an insult to the entire academic system. However, the fact remains that we have to choose between either doing that or spending the entire time killing our brains by doing nothing. 

So, even without the ‘helpful’ advice that we have gotten, the knee-jerk reaction for students during a strike, at least since I became a student, has been to go and learn a skill. The last strike that we had, I used it to learn wig making and I have to say that during a short time after that, my wig making skills helped me make some cash in school.

Now, the moment I heard that there was going to be another strike, the first thing that I did was to sit and think of what I wanted to achieve during this strike. This time, I decided that learning new skills was out of the question for me. I had done that before, and I instead, chose to harness and work on the few skills that I had presently.

I decided that a huge chunk of my time was going to be dedicated to two things, reading, and writing. Hence, I was going to go back to studying productivity books, a habit that I had abandoned as a result of the hectic academic session that we had, was going to develop the habit of reading spiritual books, and I  was going to learn how to train my brain to memorize faster, develop my writing skills, write more stories, begin blogging, exercising and work on my typing speed to increase my productivity.

At that time, though, I believed that the strike was going to last for only a month. But it has been raging since February so I was very much in the wrong with my belief. However, I did have every intention of exerting myself, but not in the way that would be evident in the short term. 

What this meant was that I had no intentions of going after certificates, had no intentions of going for physical internships as I had resolved that I would do that later in my academic life, and was going to set virtual internships aside unless they were by firms and companies that had something to offer that I was interested in. I decided that I was going to be functional in the organizations that I worked for in school in whatever activities they were going to be doing online during the strike period, but other than the book clubs that I had founded, was not going to go out of my way to look for new positions in new organizations.

I know, I know. If you are the sort of person that values the certificates and the internships and whatnot, and there is nothing wrong with that, I still do, you might think that I have been wasting my time ever since the strike – I mean, no internships? No new skills learnt? No certificates gotten from webinars and workshops? None? None at all? As a law student? The abomination! What are you going to post on your Linkedin then?

And for some time, I did believe that you had to be lazy not to be actively looking out for those kinds of things. For a while, I thought that this was the right way to go about things, and I still do to some extent now. But I had had a few experiences that made me snap in my head one day and decide that I was tired of what I termed the "Law (or University) Student Rat Race”. I was done with it, done with the fact that I kept doing stuff that I neither liked nor even got any value from because I wanted to get that, you know, shiny certificate to post on Linkedin just to get people to send me already suggested comments from Linkedin ‘Congrats on your new post!’.

Now, before I begin my rant, I believe I should share a few things about myself. Now I believe that I am something called a Type A personality, as most law students and lawyers are said to be. This means that I am very career and productivity-oriented, a bit of a workaholic, and I hate having nothing to do, hate feeling lazy and unproductive.

During my first year at the university, I came a bit naïve and not so aware of things. And by the time the pandemic came and I began my productivity journey, one of the first things that I practiced was something called Digital Minimalism, in which I drastically reduced the amount of time that I spent on the internet, most especially on any social media except Youtube for my ‘Study with Me’ videos and relaxation.

By the time I came back for my second semester of Year One, I found that I had missed out on a lot of webinars and moot court competitions and whatnot. Since I still believed that all I had to do was work towards my grades, I was not an active member in any organization except for one.

But then, all around me, people were doing stuff, stuff that I could not do, stuff that I was confused about, stuff that I was beginning to realize that I should want to do.

Of course, now that I am very much actively involved in those things, I realize that I greatly exaggerated the knowledge of the rest of my peers and felt depressed for nothing, but at that period, I felt grossly inadequate as a student, confused and stupid at times even.

And so I did what I still believe was the reasonable thing for me to do; I began to participate. I made friends with the right people, and spent a lot of my time in the faculty- the faculty was essentially more of a habitation for me than my hostel. And by the end of the second semester of my second year, just a few months after, I had become an active person in moot court, even became lead counsel for some cases (law stuff kindly ignore if uninterested), had joined several clubs and taken executive positions, had done my first physical internship and had applied for some virtual ones, had participated in a Model United Nations Conference, had participated in several essay competitions and had gotten awards in few, had become a part of the executive in both my faculty and my fellowship. 

Essentially, I was on a roll. If there was any activity to be done that I felt was worthy of note for you know, my ‘CV’ or just to feel as though I was doing something others were not doing, something that would make me stand out, I did it. My CGPA was also decent and I had also begun a part-time job in writing that promised good pay.

Now, I also had several burnouts during my second year in the university, did literally no fun activities as the little time I had outside of school activities were solely dedicated to my academics, and I generally operated at a very low energy level. I had also completely abandoned exercising and other leisure activities that I was engaged in. One time I complained to my friend that I could not wait for the year to end so that I could have even a little bit of fun and he was like, “Why not do it? it only takes a few hours.” To which I truthfully replied that I just did not have a few hours to spare. 

I was performing amazingly in my second year at the university. But I was not the top performer, especially when it came to extracurricular activities.

And that lay the problem, or at least what I thought was a problem. Type A that I was, it greatly bugged me that I was not the top performer and the ‘great’ thing about today’s world is that if you are not the best performer in any aspect of life that you are interested in, the world just has a way of shoving it in your face that you are not. As for me, apart from the peer pressure that came with seeing my friends doing things that I was not doing, the real madness began when, acting on the advice of a senior colleague, I opened a Linkedin account.

Now, Linkedin is a good space, and it is good to have the pleasure of creating the best profile out there and talking about all the great things that you have done. You worked for it. If you choose to share your successes with the world, I would be stupid to bash you.

But the thing with Linkedin, at least the thing that I noticed was that even if I did not follow these people, the algorithm was carved out for me to run mad with the feeling of suboptimal performance. 

Yes, I had a good CGPA and was the executive of several organizations but so what? This person in my timeline interned in five of the top law firms in his first year, won a scholarship, won first prize in ten essays, started his or her organization, has thousands of followers and thousands of studio pictures wearing a suit with hands folded tightly on his or her chest and an expression that screamed top performer and this other person over here in my timeline? Well, he just graduated with a 4.99 CGPA in law. First-class has levels, my dear.

And at first, any time that I saw someone say anything negative about Linkedin and the performance obsession or toxic productivity that it tended to create, I was always the first to see them as lazy and unserious with their lives at best or just plain envious of other people’s accomplishments at worst. While they were busy complaining about the pressures of the app and the toxic productivity culture that it promoted, I was busily screenshotting the profiles of other students that had amazing profiles and trying to get to know what and how they got to where they were, asking questions, doing research and whatnot, essentially trying to find out ways to copy them, to be just like them. Yes, I had done a few things but then so what? I was not good enough. I did not have twenty experiences and job positions. I had not gotten hundreds of thousands off an essay competition. I was not the best compared to my peers over there. And I wanted to be the best. 

Healthy competition?

At a time I thought that it was, but not quite.

This was because, I was so interested in getting and being, performing, and over-performing, that I did not even notice that I had begun to work on autopilot. I jumped into every opportunity that I saw without even thinking, taking the time to ask God if it was the right way for me to go or even seeing if I enjoyed what I was doing. I believed that despite the fact I had not yet found an area of interest in law that appealed to me, I still had to grind, still had to do things that I had little to no interest in, because that was what the top performers were doing.

If I missed out on something that I would have been able to get, I beat myself up. If I noticed that something had happened that I would have played a part in, I felt bad. If I noticed that some of the top performers had secured a position, even though I didn’t have much interest in that position, I got angry at myself for not getting the same. I was obsessed with doing and doing and doing, regardless of whether I even knew what it was that I was doing. 

Why? Because that was what I was told I had to do. I was told that good results were common but what stood out was having that jaw-dropping resume. I was told that I had to keep performing, had to keep getting more of everything. More positions, more awards, more titles. I aspired for things I did not even like, ignoring the fact that I was abandoning so many things I liked doing as a result.

And thank God that I had gotten a few experiences that made me reevaluate what it was that I was even doing.

First, because I was in some organizations, I began to notice a certain phenomenon among students.

All of the top performers wanted to be a part of something. Every single one of them wanted to lead an organization. But I realized that what a lot of people wanted were the titles but not the knowledge to be acquired from the position or to even to do any work at all.

By the time that I started joining organizations, receiving appointment letters and whatnot, I began realizing that probably up to half of the student organizations that I was a part of did little to nothing, and a lot of them had executives who were just executives by title. Most of the time, an organization died when someone managed to secure his or her way to the top with no intention to do anything with the position he or she has acquired.

And I feel ashamed to say this, but there was a brief time that I kind of liked those kinds of organizations. Because I was already doing so much, they were my avenues to doing even more without actually doing more. There were some that I would get appointment letters and certificates of appreciation from after the tenure had passed without having done any single thing there, not because I shirked from my duties – in fact, I hate when people do that and hence strive not to- but because there were no duties for me to perform in the first place.

But did I use the names of the positions and the pictures of the certificates to garnish my Linkedin profile and posts? You bet I did. 

And at first, I thought it was a rare phenomenon until I asked about some other organizations, curious to learn all that was being done there, only to hear someone mention something along the lines of, “Well, we are not very active, you know.” I would see even the highest of leaders of the student organizations doing nothing but identifying as being leaders. I would see people struggle to get positions not because they intended to do anything, but because they wanted to bask in the glory of getting those positions. Now, this did not happen in all organisations, some had shown themselves to be very effective and functional. But the number of organisations that were like that was alarming. As I said before, many people only wanted the glory of the title and nothing more. 

In fact, I had participated in an online internship in which people just wrote their names as present for the zoom meetings, sometimes even begged someone to help them with it, without actually participating in anything, just so that they could receive that shiny certificate to display on their social media. 

And I realized that I was not the only one that was caught up in this web, I was not the only one doing things that I did not want to do simply because it was being done by the quote-unquote top performers.

I have come to resent that mindset. What is the purpose of doing things, and engaging in activities if you are not getting any value from them? What is the purpose of acquiring titles that you do not even enjoy having? What was the point of letting school pass through you if you were not even having a good time while doing so?

Now the strike is before us and another wave of madness has set in, just slightly different from that which I noticed during the academic sessions. Now, every young student is under the pressure of acquiring skills, not just any skill, but certain preferred ones like digital affiliate marketing, UI/UX, copywriting, forex, crypto, graphics design, and the likes. There are dozens of both paid and free webinars and advertisements that seem to urge students to perform, get, learn, and make them feel as though they are wasting their time if they are not busy learning a skill or two.

And then there are the internships. Not every faculty takes this as a priority, but for my faculty, this pressure begins to mount up whenever there is a break, a strike, or a holiday, a feeling that you have been wasting your time if you are not engaged in an internship or a certificate course at the moment. Some even engaged in three virtual internships running at the same time, a physical one, enrolling for ten courses, and are still looking for more. 

And because of this pressure, there have been times that, even though I have set out my priorities for this strike, I begin to feel a bit inadequate all over again because I know that I am not doing a lot of things that my mates are engaged in. But I have tried and am still trying my best to fight this mindset.

I know that just like I used to feel, there are certain people out there who are under this pressure to do something, anything, so as not to feel lazy and unproductive.

And I want to say this, it is necessary to spend this time doing something productive – in fact, if you have not been, then I am shocked at how someone has been able to spend about 80 plus days doing absolutely nothing. But if you are not among those who honestly enjoy doing what they are doing, who are learning these skills and participating in these internships because they are honestly curious about them,  but are among the group of people that are not very thrilled with what they are doing, stuck in the web of the pressure of having to perform, then I have a bit of advice for you. Step back. Breathe. And think.

If you have been engaging in something, learning a particular skill for a while, or any other thing and you hate it but are still doing it because you think that the best of the best are doing so, I think it is time to leave. There is courage in knowing the time to stop and leave something that you do not enjoy doing. You have no one to impress and you have to realize that this life is not one big competition.

If you are about to enter into something not because you think you would enjoy it or because you are genuinely curious about it but because of social pressures, then don’t. It is not worth it. Go and engage in that which you would enjoy even though it appears to be less glamorous than the other.

And, despite all that I have said, do ensure that you are productive, but use your own measure, not that of any other person or a system. No one knows how much longer this strike would last, and if you have been using it as an opportunity to one-up your peers, you need to slide back and realize that you are probably not much better than the person that has been wasting away his or her time.

If you have abandoned something you enjoyed because it did not appear as glamorous as what you saw on Linkedin, or because you felt that it would not make you look much different from your peers, then go back to that. Life is short. Do that which you enjoy.

But if you have been doing all that and loving every ride of the way, fuelled intrinsically and not extrinsically by the pressure of social media or peer pressure, then go on. Reach for the stars but remember that the ideal person that you want to become should be the only person that you measure yourself up against.

This is difficult to do, I know. Social pressure is difficult to resist and I know that the only reason why I have been able to be as laid back as I want to is that, due to the strike, I can prevent myself from seeing that which I do not want to see, can simply switch off my phone and do not have to see those achieving feats physically as I would once the session begins. But please note, and this is something that I am working on making my mantra,  that never should you let yourself be swept up, forget your achievements, and feel like a failure because your level of success is perceived objectively as lower than any other person. You are running your own race, on your own track, and spending your time trying to be like some other group of people is a terrible way to waste life.

Recently, I saw a flier that asked, ‘What are you doing with your ASUU time?’ and I have to say, after a relatively long time, I am finally using it to do what I actually want to do, not just what I feel pressured to do, and being very productive at it too.

I hope you have been doing the same as well.

                                                                                                                 

 

I am not only a writer; I also like to identify as an avid reader. I love reading across several genres of books. And for some time, I have taken it as a personal resolution to ensure that I substitute the time I spend on social media and television for books. Because of that, I spend a lot of my leisure time reading books.

Furthermore, because I am the director of a book club; and because of the time afforded to me as a result of the strike, I have had a lot of time to burrow into books and spend a lot of my time tapping into different sources of information.

Here are the books that I read in this past month of April.

1.     The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey:

This book was written by a man who, after college, decided to reject two job offers in order to pursue his passion for productivity. He then decided to dedicate a year to conducting different productivity projects, which he documented in his blog, once titled ‘A Year of Productivity’ and now called ‘A Life of Productivity’. While he writes on most of the experiments in his blog, in his book, he shares various tips that he learned throughout the time that he spent doing the year-long experiment.

 

Some of his most memorable tips are:

• Take some time off work to meditate and reflect to ensure that you are not working on autopilot.
• Ensure that you build up your attention muscle when working and protect it from external distractions so that you do not end up working longer; just to achieve less at the end.
• Cut down on the amount of time you spend on the internet and your devices.
• Ensure that you engage in single-tasking to build up attention muscles and carve out more attentional space around the task you are tackling at the moment.
• The food you eat plays a huge role in determining the energy that you have for the rest of the day, so ensure that you watch the food you eat daily. Eat more natural healthy foods and avoid stimulants like coffee or alcohol, or sugar.
• Exercise is vital in building up the energy that you have in a day and it also stimulates the brain so, incorporate exercise into your day etc.

The book was an easy and enjoyable read as the author used simple English and vivid illustrations, most from the experiments he carried out, to spice up his book. I found it a very enjoyable read and I would highly recommend the book to anyone who wishes to start his or her productivity journey.

 

2.     The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

In as much as the internet has some undeniable benefits; there has been a rise in authors who completely reject everything that the internet stands for, most basing their arguments on the new wave of internet addiction that seems to have swept through the entire planet and the fact that one of the core components of the internet, i.e. social media, has been one of the main factors that have led to the rise in narcissism and depression amongst the people of the world.

In this award-winning book, Nicholas Carr brings about a new perspective on the effects of the internet. And he argues that the move from the analogical to the digital has not just brought about a change in the way the world functions; it has also altered our brains.

 

According to the author, 

“Over the last few years, I have had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping my neural circuitry, reprogramming my memory. My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell- but it’s changing.”

 

He then tells his stories of how, before the rise of the internet, he used to be able to immerse himself in lengthy books and articles but seems to have lost the ability to do so, and gives examples of several others who have suffered from the same issue as well.

 

He bases his arguments by talking about the rise of other technologies, such as the clock, and the map, and how they altered the way we as humans thought. For instance, with the rise of the clock came the rise of industrialization, as we as humans began to take strict note of the time and began to fashion our lives according to the tickings of the clock. This was unlike before, when we just lived and let the days pass on. 

 

According to the author, just as the rise of the map and now GPS has caused the part of the brain that is meant to be able to take note of spatial locations to shrink, he believes the internet has made us lose our abilities to concentrate and focus our attention, has rid us of our ability to make proper use of our memories, and has generally made us unable to do certain things that our predecessors learned how to do with their brains during the time before the internet. 

 

He knows that this will get worse, as the creators of computers and search engines are continually on the hunt to ensure that everything is made completely easy with the internet. But he warns that the easier way is not necessarily always the best.

 

The author warns that we should not allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we have numbed an essential part of ourselves.

The book was a very insightful one, but I have to admit that it was quite difficult to read as, unlike the books that I am used to, it was very scientific. Sometimes, the author also talked about things that I was not very interested in; even spent chapters giving historical facts that did not interest me in any way. But I do advise those who wish to read and tap from the vast knowledge contained in the book to do so.

 

3.     The Christian Life is Exciting by Demos Shakarian

I did not begin this book in April, but I read the last part of it and finished it by the end of April.

The book is a Bible course written by the founder of the Full Gospel Business Men Fellowship International, with twelve lessons dealing with topics such as commitment to Christ, the Dynamics of Faith, Prayer, Sharing Christ with the world, God, and His relationship to man, etc. 

It is an amazing book for anyone who wishes to begin the person’s journey with Christ on a solid foundation and I do recommend the book to all Christians, especially those who are looking for books that will aid them in their spiritual growth.

 

4.     Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

This book deals with the issue of procrastination and the author says that the best way to effectively get rid of it and get things done is to ensure that every day, a person does the biggest and most important task(frog) first. According to him, if the first thing you do in a day is to eat a live frog, you can spend the rest of the day knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

 

He offers other useful tips such as:

• Planning the day the night before so that your subconscious mind can work on the list all night long while you sleep.
• Think long-term when working and setting goals.
• There are only three core tasks that you do that contain most of the value you have to offer. Identify them and ensure that the bulk of your time goes into achieving them.
• Ensure you ask yourself three questions regularly to ensure that you focus on your biggest frog at all times

What are my highest value activities?

What can I and only I do that if done well, will make a real difference?

What is the most valuable use of my time right now?

• If you choose to procrastinate, ensure that you procrastinate on small tasks or low-value activities. Decide to either procrastinate on or delegate the activities that don’t make that much of a contribution to your life in favour of those that make more of a contribution to your life.

All in all, it was a simple and quite interesting book to read. If procrastination is something you have been battling for some time and you wish to overcome it, I would highly recommend this book.

 

5.     How Successful People Think by John Maxwell

This was the book that was reviewed by the book club that I manage. It was written by an American pastor whose main focus is on leadership and self-growth. 

According to the author of this book, the main thing that differentiates successful from unsuccessful people is the way they think and we have to work towards developing the sort of mindset and thinking the way that successful people think. He lists out some of the ways that successful people think. They think big, can focus and concentrate for a considerable period of time, are creative, are realistic when setting their goals, make use of strategies and plans to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves, understand the importance of having a community of thinkers, are generous, and do not flow in line with the popular thought patterns of others, etc.

It is a different book from the kinds that I usually prefer reading in that it does not do much to offer practical steps to take in my opinion. But it is a concise book and hence, was a good read for me.

 

6.     Amongst Ourselves by Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall

If I were not studying law, I believe that I would have studied psychology and gone on to be a therapist. Right from time, I have always been interested in mental illnesses and what goes on in the minds of those who have the worst of the mental illnesses, the most absurd of them. 

Over the years, I have carried out my research to understand certain mental disorders like bipolar disorder, chronic depression, borderline personality disorder, etc, and one of my favourite ways of conducting research is reading books on the disorders.

This month, I decided to research Dissociative Identity Disorder which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder, a disorder that occurs when a person has two or more identities or personalities, each with its way of being. It is a response to trauma which usually occurs when a person is a child. More specifically, it occurs in individuals that have suffered from an extended period of abuse, such as ritual or cult abuse.

When a person dissociates, they leave their bodies to get away from the pain and trauma. When this defense is not strong enough to protect the person, different personalities emerge to handle the experience. These personalities allow the child to survive; in the sense that when the child is being harmed or experiencing traumatic episodes, the other personalities take the pain. This allows the child to return to their body after the bad things have happened without any awareness of what has occurred.

Now, DID is such a rare disorder that I have read that there are certain therapists and mental health professionals who do not even believe that such an illness exists. There are even others who believe that it is demon possession as I once used to think that it was.

It is a strange disorder and I am still trying to grasp how the human brain can go so far as to enable a person to create distinct fragmented personalities as a response to trauma. But I have to say; it has been interesting studying the disorder. 

The book was more of a manual written by two people on how both people with the disorder and those around them can handle it and while I would have preferred a novel as there were some parts of the book that I did not read because they were not for me, I have to say that I learnt a lot from the book. I still am not satisfied with the knowledge that I have gotten, so I am still going to read other books.

 

7.     The Selection Series by Kiera Cass

I did not want to add this here but oh well. This book series was somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, enjoyable to read, but just a simple story written in simple writing with no true insights hidden in the wordings of the book. It definitely cannot be put within the ranks of Kafka’s works or those of Achebe but it was really exciting to read.

It has a Disneyesque storyline, written the simple way that Disney stories are written. The series follows a 17-year-old girl who is part of the 35 girls that have been chosen to participate in some sort of game that can be said to be similar to The Bachelor, in which the prince gets to select one of the girls to be the queen of the land.

As I said earlier, it is the sort of book that you know offers no real value but is so interesting, that you ignore some of the plot holes and just keep reading

The series has more than four books, about eight or so if you include the novellas, but I stopped after reading the first three books and a novella in the series.

 

As someone who is very interested in growing as an individual, I have found that reading books that expand over multiple genres is a great way to open my eyes and stimulate my brain. As a result, I would encourage anyone that wishes to grow to read vast and wide, expand your knowledge base, and make yourself a well rounded individual. I hope to squeeze out the time to read even more books by the end of this month.