Hello Grasshoppa,
With the extension after extension of our MCO, it seems that we are getting used to the new normal. In one of the books that read entitled The 4-Hour Work Week, the author Tim Ferris mentioned about the increase of productivity with shorter working hours & working from different locations. Honestly, it sounded impossible to certain individuals especially for me who works a 9-5 sales job.
MCO has forced many companies to enforce their staff to work from home. First 2 weeks was tough for me as I am really not used to just sitting down all day in front of my laptop to work as my daily job involves meeting different customer. I have a hectic sales job. With the MCO, I am able to still sell & perform my daily task. The difference is, my time on the road is alot lesser & my selling is done via phone call instead of face to face which has led to an increase in my productivity.
During the MCO, I have also been occupied with BBM hosting transfer. When I started my blog in 2018, I was using WordPress.com Premium Plan that cost me around RM1500 for the first 2 years. With the renewal due on 28th May, I checked that it cost me almost RM2000 per year to renew my package. Honestly it’s too expensive & not worth it for me to renew so I decided to move my host to another cheaper option. The saving that I am getting is around RM1200 per year. You guys may receive an email on the published of my old post & there was a point where BBM was down for almost 50 hours. It was a frustrating moment & it took me almost 3 weeks to complete the transfer. Hopefully everything is fine now.
Aside from that, I have also launched my e-commerce store called Black Belt Tape where I am selling my own brand of finger tapes. It is a project that I co-started since October 2019 but it was only launched in April 2020. To be honest, it is a tough time to launch it as there won’t be any demand during period like this but since this is a long term business, I am confident that it will do great. My goal is to provide the best quality finger tape with the most reasonable price in the market.
I have mentioned multiple times in my past few post on opportunity to invest. This period also have given me time for me to do some re-balancing for my investment portfolio. We do not know where the market will be heading at the moment. Some people said it will be worst & some may say that it is recovering. Honestly I don’t know & I am not a fortune teller to predict. My focus is to continue to invest but still being cautious with my investment decision.
Aside from increasing some personal work & 9-5 work productivity, my time spent on Netflix is also increasing. LOL. I barely watch Netflix prior MCO as I would only get home around 10.30pm everyday & leave home around 8am. I don’t recall how many series I have completed during the MCO. On top of that, I get to spend more time playing my Nintendo Switch, do some yoga & did a bit of BJJ solo workout. I noticed some improvement in terms of my flexibility however I have lost weight & muscle mass.
Conclusion :
Personally I think that MCO has proven that working from home or other location is possible. I believed that my productivity has increased in comparison to pre-MCO. It has allowed me to focus better with lesser distractions. The downside of it is, the MCO is not a good thing as this pandemic is affecting the health & financial of many around the world. Many countries are also suffering as it is affecting their economy. I don’t know how soon this will end but it’s definitely very sad to experience this situation.
Hope everyone is staying safe & take care.
OSS!