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Arkansas is home to gorgeous lakes, rivers, and hot springs. We’re the capital of quartz, folk music, and spinach. We’re the only state that produces diamonds, and since 2019, we’ve been one of the 36 states with access to medical marijuana for qualifying patients.
Society has used cannabis for a lot of different reasons throughout time, and while some might suggest its benefactors are lazy and unmotivated, that stigma has long been proven false.
In this Arkansas Marijuana Card Guide, we’ll cover staying productive while using medical marijuana and give you some tips to lock into the creativity that cannabis is often associated with!
5 Tips to Stay Productive While Using Medical Marijuana
The age-old discrimination that pot smokers are lazy has long been put to rest by the clear examples of intelligent and hardworking people who use cannabis.
In fact, as access to cannabis is growing in the country, certain groups of people using cannabis are rising exponentially.
1 in 20 Americans aged 55 or older report using marijuana recently, a significant increase from similar data reported just a few years before.
It’s very likely that most people wouldn’t consider themselves lazy, but it’s pretty common to hear the false claim that cannabis users are inherently unmotivated.
And while it’s true that going a little overboard with cannabis can result in an especially relaxed and comfortable state, it certainly isn’t true that using cannabis will cause laziness.
But if you do find yourself feeling a little extra sedated and a little less motivated, here are some helpful tips that can keep you productive while using medical marijuana:
Tip #1. Start With a Plan
Chances are good that if you’ve found yourself in a sloth-like state of noncompliance with anything your brain suggests is “too much work”, you’ve probably dosed a little too high.
Avoid this by starting with a plan; take doses that you are familiar with.
Try to stick with products that you know will give you the treatment you are looking for while having the least amount of psychological or inconveniencing impacts.
If you are taking a dosage of a for the first time or a new product that you have little or no experience with, it’s best to reserve them for blocks of time where you won’t need to accomplish much, such as in the evening or before bedtime.
This can help you build familiarity with a product and if the dosage turns out to be too strong, the worst repercussions will be a good night’s sleep, and possibly an extra trip to the refrigerator for late-night snacks.
Tip #2. Stick to the Plan, & Have a Backup
Sticking to your plan will keep you in check, but often it can be tempting or even sometimes necessary to veer off the intended path.
You might have accidentally grabbed a 10mg edible instead of a 5mg, maybe the dispensary ran out of your lower THC flower and you bought a more potent strain, or perhaps the strain you bought a month ago is now much more potent and you were unaware, whatever the case, it happens.
This is where a good backup plan will come in handy. There’s no catastrophic consequence of suddenly becoming too high other than being too high, which to be fair, can be a little aggressive, but overall it can be very manageable with a solid backup plan.
And a backup plan will be highly relative, but it might include things like taking a few minutes of space for yourself in a private area, drinking a little bit more water, or avoiding public interactions for a moment or two.
Having an activity that you can focus on can be especially helpful, a small but productive task that doesn’t require extraordinary mental capacity can be surprisingly calming for someone who is trying to focus on too many things all at once.
Personal meditations and words of encouragement can be really helpful if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, and soft music for a few minutes can change the entire trajectory of an experience, so having a playlist around is pretty handy too.
Our tips for what to do when you get too high apply here.
Tip #3. Identify Your Goals & Follow Through
The best way to stay productive while using medical marijuana is to have productive things to do! Ultimately medical marijuana will have very little impact on productivity if there is nothing productive happening to begin with.
Although you might find yourself a little more excitable, using medical marijuana won’t likely cause a breakthrough case of hyperintelligence or extremely productive states of consciousness, you really need to already be doing things for cannabis to have an impact on them.
If you intend to be productive with things, all that is essentially required is that you follow through with that intention.
This is where medical marijuana can especially help or hurt your case for productivity.
Following through can perhaps be one of the most challenging links in the chain of accomplishing stuff, and often for medical marijuana users this is where things can become a little more enlightened, or a little more sluggish.
At the point where you either realize you have difficult things to do, have too many things to do, or things need to be done that you don’t want to do, your inner self will likely have some thoughts on the matter.
Those thoughts will be highly influenced by how you feel and what your body has decided it is ready to do, and these are two areas that cannabis might heighten your awareness of.
You might respond by feeling a sense of burden concerning the upcoming tasks, perhaps a spark of creativity on how to approach them in a new way, or even a sense of pride in looking forward to the completion of whatever the things are.
Perhaps you don’t even want to do them and find yourself arguing about whether they should even be done or not, in reality any person could experience any range of thoughts or emotions concerning the tasks.
Whatever the case, this moment of self-introspection might be heightened to some degree by cannabis use, and how willing you will be to proceed with the tasks can be affected by how much desire you have to do them, and how much meaning they have to you.
Cannabis has a funny way of showing you your own priorities, and sometimes in ways that might not immediately make sense.
It is very possible that often when you feel overwhelmed about upcoming events or tasks, it is because your body is actually quite tired and is requesting a rest before attacking new goals.
Busy people can be especially vulnerable to overworking and long periods of stress without appropriate time or space to destress, and that can take its toll on both mental and physical health.
Tip #4. Start, and Keep Starting
Tips number four and five for how to be productive while using medical marijuana go hand in hand; start the tasks & try to achieve a flow-state.
Mumbo-jumbo aside, your body is performing an extraordinary range of tasks all the time without any thoughts or conscious input from you. Your body is using its autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for many of the biological tasks and operations your body has to perform at any given time with as little or no conscious thought as possible regarding their operation.
Similar to your body’s natural reflexes, the ANS is working very hard 24/7 to make sure that your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and how to respond if a rapid and more unusual event occurs, such as a sneeze, swallowing, or coughing.
And like your body’s unconscious, task-oriented functionality, you also use your consciousness and thoughts to perform a variety of functions that you don’t always have to be quite in tune with.
For example, when you do simple math like addition, you likely don’t have to put much thought into the process or design of addition itself, you probably just add the numbers together, or perhaps you have the answer memorized, such as “2 + 2 = 4”.
This happens in a huge array of functions that your brain is consciously and unconsciously dipping into, to extract, analyze, or interpret various pieces of data.
When you see a family member or a close friend that you are familiar with, your brain matches the name of the person to their appearance, you likely don’t pause for their name like you might with a new acquaintance or when you meet a new person.
It’s likely that you don’t count how many brushstrokes you took when you are finished brushing your teeth, you just accept that a certain amount of time and effort has passed that equates to your teeth being clean.
These and many other functions might suddenly become perceivable or have a new associated value with them with cannabis use.
You might find yourself unexpectedly fascinated with analyzing things from a new perspective, or completely uninterested in a subject you now realize pales in comparison to a more interesting topic that you are excited to learn more about.
It is also likely possible that you can take charge of this phenomena to some degree by dialing your focus into predetermined tasks, and possibly interrupt or change some of these behavioral patterns with cannabis.
The idea is to just start the task, and let the process work itself from there. You might find yourself suddenly unburdened by the task, having already completed it.
Tip #5. The Flow
The final tip for being productive while using medical marijuana is to try and achieve the flow state.
As an alternative to being burdened by an upcoming goal, try to skip past the feelings you have concerning the task, and just start them.
After some amount of time, it is likely that you will find yourself much farther into the task than you expected, and you might even have very little or hazy recall of how you got there.
There’s even a name for this phenomena specifically when it applies to drivers, called Highway Hypnosis, which is a mental state where your conscious mind is not participating whatsoever in your body’s ability to perform the operations required to drive a motor vehicle.
If you’ve ever been on a long drive, perhaps on the freeway for long hours and suddenly have a moment where you can’t quite remember actually driving for the last 20 minutes or so, that’s highway hypnosis.
Cannabis use is often linked to heightened states of awareness, new perceptions, and minor distortions of time for newer users.
For some, cannabis use can even introduce a similar, but likely less abrasive form of highway hypnosis, allowing you to dial in and perform tasks with an amplified sense of creativity or excitement for longer periods of time than you perceive them to be.
As a writer, I can confirm that pretty much this whole article was written under these circumstances.
And while this phenomenon is probably just as difficult to capture and or define as having a spark of genius, a jolt of creative energy, or a revolutionary thought, your odds are probably much higher in achieving it if you are accessing it regularly, and for many chronically and terminally ill patients, their treatment plan includes regular use of medical cannabis products.
How Medical Marijuana Can Help Productivity
Although ultimately how productive you are is much more affected by who you are than what you consume, medical cannabis has been consumed by brilliant (and not brilliant) people for a very long time.
Fortunately in 2021, we publicly recognize that the stigma about cannabis and laziness is just not true, and studies even suggest that people with higher IQ’s are more likely to use cannabis.
In fact, there are even studies that suggest cannabis use might improve cognitive function, like those from Harvard University.
Cannabis is also used to treat several neurological disorders that affect cognition, such as ALS and Alzheimer’s, both qualifying conditions for medical marijuana in Arkansas.
Cannabis can be safely incorporated into many different treatment plans without severe or adverse effects.
Cannabis does have psychotropic effects however, and it can impair your short term memory and cause altered perceptions, which in many cases might be a positive effect, such as the case with many PTSD patients.
Cannabis might help you shed new light on old perceptions you’ve held onto and forgotten, or it might help remind you to take a break.
It could suggest that what you’ve been focused on is not as important as what you are ignoring or putting off, and it might present these ideas to you in dramatic ways.
However it works out, being productive has a lot more to do with what you’re doing and a lot less to do with what you think about it.
And often when the world is a little too critical you can find yourself overthinking even simple things, and cannabis use can be a healthy reminder to take time for yourself and appreciate life around you.
Become an Arkansas Marijuana Patient
Qualifying Arkansas patients can schedule an appointment to meet with one of our certified physicians and get approved for medical marijuana treatment.
We’re dedicated to helping patients every step of the way, feel free to give us a call at 844-249-8714, and we can answer your questions about getting medical marijuana in Arkansas.
Doctors Who Care. Relief You Can Trust.
Helping everyone achieve wellness safely and conveniently through increased access to medical marijuana. Our focus on education, inclusion, and acceptance will reduce stigma for our patients by providing equal access to timely information and compassionate care.
If you have any questions, call us at 844-249-8714, or simply book a medical marijuana evaluation to start getting relief you can trust today!
Check out Arkansas Marijuana Card’s Blog to keep up to date on the latest medical marijuana news, tips, and information. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to join the medical marijuana conversation in Arkansas.
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