How do you stay productive on a bad day?

Today was a bad day. No other way to put it.
The day started with me struggling to wake up at the time I wanted to. Struggled for an hour due to the cold winter.
Then when I was about to get into the rhythm of getting my tasks done for the day I hit a wall. I was looking for this mic for my camera. It was really important that I find this mic for the task I needed to complete. And I couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasted almost an hour of my time. I was already on a tight schedule.

After that hour of wasted time, I got a call from my mum. She tells me that she has Covid. Not the thing I wanted to hear. I haven’t seen her for more than 3 years and I don’t know when I will see her next. So this news didn’t help. Thankfully she has mild symptoms and I hope she recovers soon. But it’s not nice knowing your mum is suffering 5000km away.
With these two setbacks, I was being pushed towards a spiral of negativity. I was mad at myself for losing the mic and I was sad that my mum was sick. This is all my brain needed. The ammunition for shooting me with negativity. For the next few minutes, my mind was spiraling into negativity. My brain was hitting me with all the reasons to not do the tasks I had set out for today.
But with 0 interest to run, I headed out to run. I was angry at myself for not skipping my run. I wanted to skip today’s run with all my heart but I just couldn’t do it due to my commitment to future Rasheeq. I told myself to just do it for him. And I did it. Got through my run. Did a solid 3km. That run did help me get out of the negativity for a bit but it was back again.

I had an early start at work today and due to that wasted hour, I couldn’t get a proper lunch. I had to settle for a snack. I had to rush and get ready for work. I never like being in a rush.
Work went as work goes. I finished work and time came for another big task of the day. I had planned to go to the gym today for a workout and swim. Just like in the morning, I had 0 interest. This time maybe it was less than zero because it was after work. But guess what? I still managed to get my body to the gym and do my tasks because I couldn’t let future me down.

Now at the end of a bad day, I am sitting here completing this daily blog. A blog that hasn’t been easy so far but it does help to get my thoughts down. Although I journal every day this is different. Anyways back to the topic of this blog, “How do you stay productive on a bad day?’’ In my case, it was about setting priorities and getting at least the tasks on top priority done. Whenever I set tasks I try to rank them and I tell myself that even if the world ends tomorrow, task rank 1 is getting done tomorrow. And for me, for the next 4 years, it’s my fitness goal. So no matter how bad my day was I got them done. I didn’t manage to do some other tasks because it was a bad day.

One more thing. You don’t need to be productive if you are having a bad day. Some days it’s okay to rest. It’s okay to take time. We don’t all function in the same way.