Don’t Waste Time Worrying About Being Productive. Master These Easy Habits and You’ll Be Productive Anyway

Productivity is simple.

Do things everyday so you’ve got space tomorrow to do more things. The more you do that, the more you’ll learn about yourself and how you work.

The problem is life gets in the way. Fate eats plans for breakfast.

I’ve been obsessed with productivity for over a decade. I’ve gone through so many gurus, courses, and methods. But rather than invent some complicated system, it’s been a revelation to me that simplicity is the key to efficacy.

Now I just follow these principles and they’ve changed my life.

Win the First Battle

Get a running start by knowing exactly what it is you want to accomplish. What would make today a success?

But don’t get carried away. Everest can’t be climbed in a day. It’s broken up into checkpoints and camps. Do the same with your projects.

Set achievable but challenging goals for your day, then build your day around them, rather than trying to ‘find time’. Because you won’t.

Make time. Execute. Celebrate.

Compound this over a lifetime and you can achieve practically anything.

Positive Focus Trumps Negative Focus

With so much going on in our lives, our brains automatically develop frameworks, called heuristics.

You want to monitor these to make sure you’re not just planning to avoid worst-case scenarios. You want to leave space in your life for luck, opportunity, and happenstance. Focus too much on the negatives and you might miss the possibilities right in front of you.

For example, don’t go to the gym because you think you’re a weak and fat piece of shit. Go because you want to learn a new skill, lose a little weight, or feel better about yourself.

Change the story you tell yourself.

Choose one where you’re the hero.

Don’t Neglect the Small Stuff

Funny how quickly we sleep poorly when we’re anxious. Then we eat worse food and make poor decisions because we’re tired. Which means we don’t have the energy to workout, and stunt our progress if we do because of a lack of nutrients and rest. So we caffeinate ourselves to stay awake.

Time to point a figure against the face in the mirror and give it some tough love. No productivity guru, nootropic stack, or life hack is going to compensate for sloppy fundamentals. Any supplementary action ceases to offer a benefit if you need it to get to ‘normal’.

Eat well. Drink water. Sleep as much as you can. Keep your caffeine and alcohol consumption under control. And exercise in whatever way suits you.

Or be honest with yourself and admit you don’t really care enough to be anything more than sub-optimal, and so you deserve sub-optimal results.

That Goes for Upstairs Too

A healthy diet doesn’t just help your body. The better you eat, the better your brain will function and the better your mood is too.

But your brain doesn’t just need nutrients on a biological level. It needs information. So watch what you consume here too. Because scrolling through the junk carbs of social media and the news cycle will leave you sluggish, hyper-stimulated, and unhealthy.

I’m not saying cut it out completely. Everyone likes a pizza. Just make sure you’re balancing it out with nutritious stimulus too.

Take walks. Journal. Practice mindfulness. Meditate. Talk with friends. Take a break from stimulation. And find a little joy in your day.

Breathe Life Into Your Time

Every second of every day you get to decide if your time is alive or dead.

Are you using it to grow, nurture, recuperate, or develop? That’s alive time. It’s time that’s benefiting your life and making you a better version of yourself. It doesn’t have to necessarily be productive. Mindful rest is just as essential for a healthy mind and body.

But if you are spending it mindlessly, adding nothing to your day but anxiety-inducing apps and activities that grab at your attention and draw you away from your goals, you’re hurting yourself. You’re killing your dreams. This is dead time.

Choose life. Choose living. Choose to be who you know you can be.

Don’t Fix Flaws, Build Patterns Instead

Build systems that automate your success. This is especially true when fixing an issue.

Getting lost in the details of what went wrong might seem like it’s a smart move, but it’s a low leverage activity. Sure, you learn some lessons, but it’s low impact as it’s hyper-focused on one event.

So instead of trying to right individual wrongs, take the lessons and systemise success. Spend your time focusing on building the habits that automatically avoid or fix this problem.

So rather than having to actively think about how to fix issues, you’ve instead got a framework that does the thinking for you.

Distinguish Between Fluency And Accuracy

When we create work, we’re generally in one of two modes: fluent, or accurate.

With writing, fluency is when we free write, and let our creativity shine. It’s when our brain gets to explore wacky ideas and connect seemingly unrelated dots.

Accuracy is when we deliberately practice, focusing on a specific skill we want to learn. Or when we edit, and tighten things up. We call out misnomers and tidy up sloppy mistakes.

This applies to most tasks we’ll do: we’re either practicing, producing or polishing. You’ll slow yourself down if you try to edit your writing while you’re producing it. So batch tasks to get what you want to done more efficiently.

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Productivity isn’t about the latest trend or the coolest hack. It’s about getting the best out of yourself, achieving your goals, and living a life you enjoy.

Go back to the basics and start from the ground up. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be amazed what you learn about yourself if you do.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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