Productivity Overwhelm
If you read enough ‘self-help’ or ‘productivity’ blogs, it’s easy to get bogged down with things you ‘should be’ doing. And if you really want these tasks to make an impact you’d better do them everyday, and turn them into habits.
It’s easy to read blogs. Every article you read turns into another ‘actionable takeaway’ that you add to your list. But it’s hard to actually implement new habits. So you end up with a list of tasks so long it doesn’t even fit on your laptop screen. You feel like you ‘should’ be doing all of these, but there’s a lot of things to do, and you’re busy, and now you’ve been putting off all of them for weeks. Your ‘to-do’ list becomes your ‘should-do’ list.
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When you read an article, and find an interesting action item, don’t do it. If the new action is really compelling, put it in a ‘maybe / someday’ list. A few weeks or months down the road, you’ll look at your ‘maybe / someday’ list and realize most of the tasks aren’t useful. If a new action compels you week after week, then you can think about adding it in.
Say no to adding tasks to your day.
Read fewer productivity blogs
Saying no includes saying no to “productivity porn”. Reading short articles about productivity feels good. You don’t have to work very hard to read ‘Improve Your Productivity With These 8 Unbelievable Hacks!’, even though you think you’re being useful.
If you’re putting off real work to read articles, there’s something wrong. If you’re reading about hacks for 1-2% improvements (‘Speed up your mouse cursor!’) but failing to hit the fundamentals[], you’re wasting your time.
I’m not saying read zero productivity articles, there’s a lot of great information out there []. Just make sure you aren’t spending more time reading about productivity than actually being productive.
Any Benefit Mindset: [Thinking that] you’re justified in using a…tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it. - Cal Newport
Add One thing at a time
When you do add new daily habits, make it one at a time. Even if you feel like you’ve got the extra bandwidth to handle more today, remember that you may not have that bandwidth tomorrow. Keep it simple, one thing at a time.
Chunking
Ask a runner what their daily exercise routine is like. You’ll get a response like, “Oh I just run for 3 to 5 miles, then stretch.”
Ask someone who hates running how they’d go for a jog. “Well, first I have to change into running clothes, then I have to put on running shoes, then I have to figure out how far I should run, then I have to figure out a path to run around my neighborhood, then I have to run and convince myself not to stop, then…, then…., then…”
Why is the process for the runner so much simpler? The runner has ‘chunked’ the whole process into one straight-forward task.
Here’s a few ways to ‘chunk’ productivity tasks:
Have a morning routine
Use a pre-formatted journal
Use an existing habit to trigger a new one (‘brush teeth’ becomes ‘brush teeth and floss’)
Fundamentals you must establish before looking for small wins:
Sleep 8 hours a night
Eat real foods 90% of the time or more
Turn off phone and computer notifications for everything
Productivity blogs with high signal-to-noise ratio:
James Clear
Tiago Forte
Sebastian Marshall
Taylor Pearson
Zenhabits
Further Reading
Work in Serial