The Year I Finally Learned to Focus

With May about to end, this month, I learned a few things that are useful and new. I could never be still for an extended period of time and never has been. I guess people call this ADHD or something but I would never label myself that way, I don’t think that label fits me. It’s just always been challenging for me to sit around. Most of the time, I skipped classes because I got so bored sitting during lectures. I would rather be in the library reading whatever my heart pleases.

For as long as I can remember, I always choose a job that won’t require me to sit for hours just so I could do something in between, to move freely and to keep me from being bored. From early on, I knew 9-5 would never fit me, not because I can’t play office politics but because sitting down is quite a challenge for me.

The thing is having to do non traditional 9-5 for more than a decade, made me so curious about it. 4 years ago, I asked this same question and I received all sorts of replies. It slipped through my mind and honestly, only today, I found the missing keys of turning myself into a 9-5-er.

Why are you working 9-5?

The secret of a single sheet of paper

Throughout this may, I’ve fixed my sleep, got back into routine and somehow, feels a lot more human than the last 2 months. To enable me to sit down, going through the papers and all the things I had to deal with, I found this trick of a single sheet of paper.

It’s just a pen and a single sheet of paper whenever I am sitting down. Usually, in the midst of me taking care of my business, I get random thoughts. From eventually finding the answer to my problems, to random grocery items, and even what I wanted to learn.

In this paper, it has all kinds of things, even a seasonal trading lesson that I was just curious about and slipped my mind randomly. It helped me stay consistent these days and I was able to be productive without wasting a lot of my time being drifted away and not achieving any result.

If you can’t sit still for even 25 minutes, this single paper sheet trick is really helpful.

It’s what has changed, something that I probably should have learned a long time ago. Either way, I am happy to have learned it now as it drastically improved a lot of aspects of my life.For as long as I remember, I always rely on my memory but you can never rely too much of it especially when a lot of things just clouds your memory.

Inside my mind, a lot of things are quite overlapping. Think of a scattered brain that in a day I can think about solving some programming problems, to finding out why my cake won’t rise and even to simply, “ I need to buy some chicken” it’s all full of problems that need to be solved.

And through this method, I learned to have them by category and not all things should be tried and solved immediately.

I’ve talked about this earlier but we’re doing a soft launch to our bakehouse next month.

It’s more like restarting what we used to do back in the day before my mom was focused on being a caregiver. Now, we’re going to do something similar and since I am on the operational side, I need to think about a logo, an event pop-up if there’s any in town and deciding the branding and even reaching out to some influencers to do a paid promotion.

Time has changed and we certainly want to keep up with times. In the past, my mom just relied on word of mouth but that’s not enough anymore and we even have to adjust some of our classic recipes to cater to the younger generation.

One of our logos looks like this but there is a possibility to change. We also need to do a lot of the things like cleaning up our space, re-opening the spot again, and even putting up some banners. For now, we are only sticking to roll and steamed cake which are something my mom is really good at. Having to test all the potential competitors, I can notice the difference in textures even though pricing is still a pain point for us because we’re using slightly more expensive ingredients.

My mom wanted me to make an instagram account as well for that and all sorts of social media stuff just for her roll cake venture. As much as I am good with it, I need to think of a concept, something that actually keeps up with times.

I don’t know where this new venture will take me but I am fairly excited for it as well.

Honestly, when it comes to business, I can never do it alone. It’s one of the things I’ve learned that I just can’t do on my own. A lot of my successful ventures have been a two or three person operation.

While I know the basics of baking and all that, I don’t think I could do it way better than my mom. For the longest time, I kind of slept on this strength of mine. I can spot a talent from miles away and help them thrive. One thing most of these people lack is visionary thinking and operational mastery. They just know how to do stuff really well but lack the know-how on spotting trends, breaking down all the necessary steps to scale. Sometimes they even don’t have the full grasp of their skill and even doubt their ability. So, it’s my job to help them recognize it and deal with all the stuff that requires analytical and decision making.

I could see a bigger picture for any kind of venture but not all people want to scale up or work with data. Some of them just enjoy the life they had and love being stuck. It’s one thing I hate the most, so I am always finding ways to keep me from being stuck.

Though I do now recognize one of the problems with me is that I love jumping from one thing to another. So, usually I’d sell something really good for a while but got bored and something else caught my attention and that’s how I stopped. Through this, I want to learn how to not do that, doing the boring stuff and see through the end of it.