The clock strikes midnight and it begins — 24 hours to make it count; 1440 minutes to accomplish enough for the day to qualify as ‘productive’.
Each day, the day races me and most days, I find myself on the losing end. However, there were days where I won — days where work was done, entries were crossed off, targets were met and the hustle was worth it. Productive days like these, although few and far between, evoked great personal satisfaction. But the fact remains that on pretty much every other day, I lost the battle.
Naturally, this brings about the question of why. And in order to understand why, I have to look into how measurements were made.
Productivity is the name of the game and the only metric of success used to quantify the worth of a day. But, what exactly is productivity? What exactly is it that differentiates a ‘productive’ day from an ‘unproductive’ one? What is it exactly that makes me feel differently about both scenarios?
Here’s the problem: the way I define and measure productivity is subjective. It’s erratic and dependent on a multitude of constantly changing factors such as mood, energy level, scheduled tasks and unforeseen circumstances.
I could have overslept, started my day late but somehow managed to fix a troublesome bug in my code that plagued me for the past two days and done nothing else and that would have been a productive day for me, despite not finishing the other scheduled things to do. On the other hand, I could have started my day at 0800, crossed off a couple of to-dos on my list, hit the gym and banged out some code and that would also have been a productive day for me as well.
Why is it that both scenarios, accomplishing only one task and all planned tasks, both lead to a productive day despite being on the two ends of the spectrum? Where’s the logic in that? In retrospect, the only reasonable conclusion would be that in both scenarios, I conquered the most important task for the day and the other tasks did not matter as much in comparison.
Now, if that’s the case, does it mean that I should just throw out the rest of the tasks since they are essentially just unnecessary clutter on my to-do list? Nope, there are still other things that need be done. It’s just that they are not as important. The key takeaway and also, my greatest mistake, was that I should have placed emphasis on quality, not quantity. But I did not.
I derived pleasure from crossing off my to-do list, liberating myself from these self-imposed shackles of productivity and in the process, lost sight of the most important thing to do.
I allowed myself to be fooled into this pleasing illusion of progress as I checked off the simpler, less important tasks while neglecting the critical task of the day.
Prioritizing the things I have to do and channeling all efforts towards the most important one first should be the way to go. And when that is done and dusted, only then should I move on to tackling the rest of the issues with whatever remains of my waking hours and energy.
Hustle. Learn from my mistakes. Make your days count.
Press on, soldier.
