I have been hanging through and was making very slow progress in one of the main parts of my life: my research. The situation made me very unhappy to a point where I ended up in a vicious cycle. My mood dragged me down to a point, where it stopped me from being productive and getting the positive moments during my work as a researcher. Even though other aspects of my life were prospering, this particular area needed to be fixed. Something had to change.
I did my research on how to improve my situation. There is plenty of advice on the Internet. It is hard to try it all, but I can tell you what worked best for me and my particular situation in a PhD program. However, everyone is different and needs to try out for himself what suits for his particular case.
First and foremost, a very important aspect of your work is the environment. I was spending a third of my day in a toxic environment, where I barely could communicate with other people due to a language and culture barrier that I am experiencing here abroad. I had to recognize this first and make up my mind, that this is definitely not normal. You should be welcome at your desk and greeted with a smile. Integration is very important and many bosses and managers oversee this important aspect. Instead, they only focus on outcome and do not see the elephant in the room. In the end, I talked to my boss about the situation and changed my desk to an international atmosphere. This change was crucial. I now communicate everyday, am happy to go to conduct my research experiments and receive helpful comments from my labmates.
Second, you need to get rid of these distractions. Distractions are sucking your energy out in exchange for a short-term satisfaction.You rather want to spend this short-term satisfaction on long-term goals. But how do you get rid of the bad habit of pursuing short-term satisfcations? A very good book helped me with a practical guidance on how to get rid of these bad habits and transform them into good ones. It is called atomic habits by James Clear and I recommend it to everyone who is still lacking motivation to change some of your bad habits. I personally reduced my time on netflix and youtube down to a 1 hour maximum, which I restricted on my personal device via settings. I cannot believe that this small step, which could be easily overcome with one button, has reduced my time wasted in mindless activities by a huge margin.
Lastly, I want to give you one very nice thought, that pops up in my head everyday after all my investigation in becoming a more productive person.
Every habit, every action you perform is a vote for the person you want to become!
So instead of sitting on your couch and eat potato crisps, you want to pursue a activity that is really leading you towards the person you are dreaming of. You have the choice.