Do Any Work Effortlessly. (The Only Article You Need)

I’ve been writing on Medium for the past 1 month without getting burned out.

The best advice I adopted from the people for not getting burnout is,

“Sometimes there will be only a few hours you’ll need to take to do the work, sometimes it will take a whole day or even a week to do a single task.”

I just wanted you to know that this mindset saves me from getting burned out and feeling guilty about the work.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Work

“You can do anything, but not everything. Burnout happens when you try to live as if you could.”

There are some days you feel more joyful or happier, or some days you feel guilty or anxious about the work.

I would like you to know that probably you may be inefficient in the work to do.

That’s why you are getting burned out.

Yeah, I know I was also in that mindset and I burned out like hell.

I was literally chasing hours to complete the work, but I realized that hours don’t determine how much work has been done.

If you’re inside this “More Hour == More Outcome” trap, maybe you’re not loving the work; you’re only thinking about when the work will be done.

Let me tell you what you’re doing…

You go to work, but you’re not able to focus on the work, you think,

“this is hard”, sometime later you realize that it’s already been 3 hours and you feel you worked for 3 hours.

But the actual reality is you absorbed around 3% of the work where it could be around 60–80%.

We are far more away from the real outcome.

That’s when burnout starts happening.

We’ve adopted the grinding mindset rather than a smart one.

We think we work 80 hours/week.

We’re not actually doing the things; we are burning and thinking that we are working if we don’t love the work we do.

On the Beliefs that Don’t Serve you

We blindly believed in the beliefs that probably work for others, not for you.

Yeah, I also believe in “if your work is too large or multiple, then 80 hours/week is nothing.”

But only when you’re truly passionate about the work or trying to be one.

At the end of the day

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
— Benjamin Franklin

Even though you have only a few things to work on in a day, you need to plan every single minute for the next day about what you’re going to do.

If you think or procrastinate to plan, or think, “I’ll later schedule my work.”

Then the actual reality will be that your next step is going to be confusing for you.

Because if you haven’t planned, you won’t know which work is my first priority and then how and where you need to shift from the work then, you won’t know, and you’ll waste your time again and again.

1 minute == 1 hour compounding (At the end of the day you will have wasted an hour of the day)

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Apparently, you’re new in the game.

You need to figure out only 4 hours of blocks of deep work fully planned.

Divide 4 hours into 4 different hours.

But remember, don’t focus on hours, focus on outcomes.

Hour 1:

Work upon the skill that is the top priority.

After that, take 10 minutes of rest.
(If you can’t focus, then you can use the Pomodoro technique.)

“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”— Gretchen Rubin

Hour 2:

If your focus in the first hour is 100%, then now it can drop up to 20% or more.

So make sure you haven’t used your phone in the rest time; instead, close your eyes and do nothing. Just close the eyes and focus on breathing only, deep relaxing breathing.

This will recharge your performance for the next hour.

Hour 3:

Initially, you may think this is real burnout.

But if you can stay focused on the work long enough, you’ll definitely get exceptional results.

Hour 3 is one of the most boring hours.

You can stop here and stop your progress or you can stay here and go far from burning.

Hour 4:

Once you reach Hour 4, you start to feel more confident, and you unlock your new level of potential.

Hour 4 will be the toughest goal for you to reach.

You’ll see at the end of Hour 4 your work will no longer annoy you and you’ll get efficient at the work.

“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” — Bob Marley

Final thoughts:

If you love to do the work, you merely think about how many hours you’re putting into it.

Think about it in this way — If you love to eat pizza, your mind will say every 2–3 days later, “Let’s go eat.”

When your mind craves something, you do it again and again.

What will happen when your mind craves the work?

You’ll stop getting burned.

“Fall in love with the work, not the reward.”
— James Clear