April 2020, Monthly Wrap-Up

Hi readers,

I hope that you have been alright this month. I hope that wherever you are, you stay safe, sound and in good health. These are some of the things that we often take for granted but the current situation puts everything in perspective, it reminds us of what is truly important. Anyway, I just hope that everything went well for you!

On my end, I would say that April was a pretty alright month, very much like March when it comes to staying home. But, rather than focusing on the things that I can’t impact, this month, I tried to focus most of my attention on the things that I actually have an influence on : my own health, both mental and physical, my knowledge and my habits. Here is what I’ve been up to.

Developing the habit of working out 🏃🏾‍♂️

Maybe I’m the only one who feels like this but, this sudden sedentary life has some impacts on my own health. Although I’m alright in every way, since last month, I noticed sudden rushes of adrenaline during the day. I think it’s mostly adrenaline that was supposed to be spent walking or running around the city, in regular days, but as it’s not quite an option lately, it became rather poisoning.

Wondergul sunset oncloudless sky

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

So for that reason and for many others I tried to build the habits of working out at home, every afternoon even if it’s only 15-30 minutes or going for a run (while staying safe of course). Considering I always wanted to develop the habit of working out but never quite succeeded, I have got to say I’m rather happy about that!

Reading more and getting inspired 📖

I’m not a fast reader, but I would like to be live that I’m a rather consistent one, I am of this who like to read multiple books at the same time (usually in different genres). Among the books in my nightstand these month, I had :

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• Le Signal by Maxim Chattam

Each of them, and especially the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People inspired me so much. Reading it a second time reminded me of a lot of its lessons and has already started to influence my life qui a bit.

On a self-finding path... 🍀

This month, I have the feeling that I got closer to myself, I identified that different roles I want to play in my life (a friend, a leader, an entrepreneur, etc), in the areas I want to have effect on and, following the advices of pretty much every Self-Help book I have read to this point, I started planning monthly, weekly, instead of only daily. Actually it’s rather crazy because when we plan daily we often overestimate the amount of work we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in whether a week, a month or a year.

On creating, designing, writing and coding 👨🏾‍💻

Creatively-wise, April was an amazing month. I felt inspired and disciplined so I wrote everyday and still have quite handful of posts in stock for the upcoming months.

I’ve also felt inspired to prioritize more the other areas which matter to me, notably designing and coding. It’s not much, and I still didn’t succeed at making it a daily routine just yet, but I feel like I’m making progress.

Oh and this month, I finally started to code a bit again when I found the frontendmentor.io website with nice and beautiful templates to work on depending on your level. Here are some of the ones I worked on this month.

Social Media Dashboard Template I worked on

Huddle Landing Page I worked on

You can click on the images to see the live preview or check out my Github profile for the code.

Here’s what I loved in March 2020 🌟

As usual, here are some of the posts, videos or podcasts I loved reading, or that inspired me the most this month :

• [Video] : Working from Home: How to Set Up Your Workspace
• [Video] : Working from Home: How to Plan Your Day
• [Video] : Increase Productivity With These Email Hacks
• [Google Docs] : Things-to-do during Lockdown
• [Newsletter / Post] : The Lucky Ones - Superorganizers
• [Newsletter / Post] : How Productivity Star Thomas Frank Reaches Millions on YouTube - Superorganizers
• [Podcast] : Web Developer Learning Path - Ladybug Podcast
• [Video] : 5 things that help me avoid procrastination
• [Post] : How to deal with blogging slump — Very relatable post from my friend Marie @ DrizzleAndHurricaneBooks

Let's chat! 💬

Here, I think that’s all for me this month. But what about you, how are you and what have you been up to in April 2020?

Disclaimer: Oh, and as I didn't go out much this month, I own none of the pictures displayed in this post. A big thanks to all of the amazing photographers at Unsplash!