Elephants and Lizards: The Role Our Emotions Play in Our Productivity

5 min readMay 14, 2019

I’m not a morning person, but I wish I was. I love reading articles titled something like “The Five Morning Habits of Ultra-Successful People” which usually say things to the effect of “Bill Gates got up at the ass-crack of dawn every morning, ran a 5k, and coded until his fingers bled, that’s why he’s rich and you’re not.” Which is fine if you’re Bill Gates, but most days you would have to physically drag me out of bed if you wanted me to wake up two hours earlier than usual.

This sounds stupid, but for years, I thought I couldn’t do certain things because I couldn’t wake up early. I had this assumption that only certain kinds of people are ultra-productive while the rest of us just struggle along, like those baby sea turtles trying to make it to the water right after they’ve hatched.

In other words, productivity was something you either had or you didn’t.

I’m here to tell you that not only was I wrong, there’s actually a whole slew of scientific studies that explain how the things behind productivity (such as willpower and motivation) actually work. As a result, I found out that the people who get ahead aren’t naturally better people than we are, they’ve just managed to find a system to better manage their impulses and actually enjoy the process.

As it turns out, the main reason we struggle with productivity is because of our emotions. I know, you’re probably thinking “Duh, Kellye, I could have told you that,” but laziness is not an emotion. Actually, unwillingness to do something is the symptom of a deeper emotional response.

Productivity and Our Emotions

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, brothers Chip and Dan Heath explain the psychology behind how we make decisions, describing our brains in terms of an “Elephant” (our emotions) and a “Rider” (our rational mind). When we’re faced with the possibility of change, we underestimate how much of our decision making relies on our emotions (our Elephant), believing that the Rider is fully in control. However, the opposite is true. The reason we trip up or refuse to even get started is because we’re having a negative emotional response to our circumstances, whether it’s fear of failure or being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task.

The neurobiological reason for this is that the amygdala, the primitive part of our brains, is in charge of our “fight, flight, or freeze” response that is triggered when faced with potential threats. In the dawn of civilization this helped us outlast our natural predators, but in the modern technological age, this part of our brains tends to do more harm than good. It’s the tiny voice in our heads reminding us that we aren’t good enough in the vain attempt to scare us into acting. This works fine in the short term, but leads to burnout, stress, and other forms of psychological damage in the long run.

If this sounds familiar, this is essentially the same argument Seth Godin makes in terms of the “lizard brain.” According to Godin, the lizard is what acts up when our sense of security is threatened and goads us to follow the herd, which is perfectly fine when you are a hunter-gatherer but counterproductive when you’re trying to do something creative like brainstorm ideas for new content or an ingenious new solution to a problem. In fact, Godin stresses that we have no problem being creative, it’s our constant need to self-sabotage that gets in the way of finishing the job.

Thus, instead of worrying about our productivity, which is just a symptom of a larger problem, a better question to ask is, “How do we tame our inner lizard or elephant?”

Shrink the Change

The Heath brothers are big advocates of “shrinking the change” and turning vague notions of goal-setting and productivity into smaller, bite-sized tasks that can be broken up. This is why management tools like “SMART” goals are so successful: they trick the brain into thinking they’re performing a simple task, but as those simple tasks pile up, they lead to bigger changes.

Take a Break

Mental health experts stress the important of healthy diet and exercise, as well as taking regular breaks in between long work hours to give the frontal cortex (the part of your brain tasked with decision making) a rest. I used to think that eating well and exercising was just for people trying to lose weight or play sports, but after trying this out myself I found a dramatic increase in my motivation levels and productivity.

Schedule the Most Important Things First

Godin advocates what he calls “thrashing” early on, meaning tackling the most brain intensive, time consuming tasks first, so that things are much easier when it comes to finishing the project. One way to implement this is to find out when your peak productive hours are so you know when to schedule your most labor-intensive items accordingly. Ironically, I tend to work best first thing in the morning and after my lunch break, so I use that time to draft or edit my articles and then check my inbox later in the day.

Dig Deeper

Even with a healthy diet, exercise, and better pacing and time management skills, you might still have to address the elephant in the room (see what I did there?) and figure out why your emotions are killing your motivation. For example, I have a hard time finishing tasks, especially when I come close to the finish line. But now I know why: my lizard brain/elephant tends to flare up right before deadlines. Therefore, I try to use self-compassion and be gentle (but firm) with myself and schedule extra time for self-care at this point in the process, so I am not neglecting my needs but also making sure I finish on time. If you’re not familiar with self-compassion, I highly recommend looking into Dr. Kristen Neff’s work on the topic. She has a number of excellent exercises on her website.

I’ll probably never be one of those morning people like Bill Gates, but you know what? I’m fine with that, because productivity is something that’s not dependent on how early you wake up. Instead, it’s largely based on how well you can manage your emotions and be kind to yourself. Therefore, I’ve given up the harsh, negative self-talk that I used to do all the time when I was trying to motivate myself to complete a project in favor of a gentler approach. As a result, I’ve learned to get more done and be happier in the process.