productivity | staying motivated and inspired

Good job I have a little brother who I can rope into taking outfit photos for me when he gets home from school. 🙂 Think he did pretty well!  I’d had a super productive day on Tuesday and ticked a bunch of things off my to-do list, so thought I might as well try to sneak in some outfit shots whilst I was on a roll too.  The cape (poncho?) needed its time in the spotlight, hence idiotic twirling once again.  I’ll master it one day!

Anyway, about that productive day.  Because according to last night’s #lbloggers chat, there’s nothing us bloggers like to babble on about more than planning and productivity and organisation lol.  Especially if there’s stationery involved.  Days at home by myself are usually my absolute BEST for getting stuff done.  Probably because I don’t really take ‘breaks’ if there’s nobody to sit and have a brew with, chat to over lunch, or run every single idea past before actually doing it.  Not taking breaks would be a really bad strategy to keep up in the long run, but sometimes I just find it far more useful to blast through a long day of ‘stuff’ then have an evening completely free later in the week.  An all or nothing approach, if you will.

For me, motivation and inspiration gather momentum (physics analogy at every opportunity, you know me) so I find this far more productive than trying to work little and often.  On Tuesday I managed to finish editing all my weekend photos, write my hotel review post and share it, take and edit photos for a post about cameras, take outfit shots, reorganise my blog categories, redo my blog header, start writing my cameras post, fit my physics and textiles work around that lot and tidy the house too, because I just kept going.  I surprised myself!  Once I’m in the zone with laptop and camera and notebook and phone (and food) all set up around me, that’s it, I’m good.  Nailed this ‘productive’ thing on Tuesday.  Wednesday night?  Not so much.  Sorted out my LinkedIn profile, made new social media buttons, and made dinner, that’s about it.  Just wasn’t in the right frame of mind.  Oh well.

I’ve seen loads of stuff online about motivation, productivity, and that kind of thing (life advice c/o Pinterest, as always) all offering different ideas and approaches.  However I think I’ve finally reached the conclusion that (for me at least) there is no routine or set way that works, and there probably won’t ever be.  Not one that’ll work for longer than a couple of days anyway.  Better to just go with the flow.  If the flow is non-stop ‘doing stuff’ from 7am-11pm, then so be it.  If the flow just ain’t happening the next day, leave it be and go to bed.  Just don’t watch Silent Witness in bed like I did – it will NOT send you to sleep, it WILL leave you awake and with nightmares.  Save that for another time. 🙂

cape: New Look | jeans: George at Asda | boots: Primark

How I’ve gone longer than a week without mentioning these boots I do not know.  We’ll skim over the fact that I already own 5 (6?) pair of black boots and maybe have a problem, and focus on the fact that they cost 6 POUNDS.  Six!  Primark sale, what a delight.  Well, a good chunk of what ends up in the sale is pretty questionable, but there are some absolute gems in there too.  They don’t feel like a flimsy bargain pair either, so have been added to my daily rotation of one pair of black boots or another.  Life on the edge these days.

lily kate x

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