These days it seems that everybody has groundbreaking ideas that promise to drastically increase your productivity and your success. And after reading a lot of essays, lists of “10 steps successful people do differently” and the likes, I came to the conclusion, that productivity advice has become just like diet tips in women’s magazines. It appears that not only does everybody claim to have found the holy grail that definitely works for you, but it also appears that everybody claims the opposite of the person before him. The sad thing is, I always had this hunch, and was extremely skeptical when all these self-declared “life coaches” would start replying to me on Twitter, recommending I look up their latest blog post on how I could overcome any and all of my problems. I don’t remember when it happened, or how, but at some point, I started to actually look at it. Maybe because I was dissatisfied with myself. Or maybe because it became impossible to avoid the online shouting match of “expert” competing for my attention with their “life changing discoveries”.
On any given day, you can find one publication saying that you need 8 hours of sleep to reach your peak productivity, while another blog writes that “the greatest minds in history only needed 5 hours of sleep”. Each point to some ominous research that somebody supposedly did. If you are lucky, they are at least honest enough to point out — usually at the very end of a long article, and as part of an overly complex sentence structure not unlike the one I am fabricating right here — that the given recommendation does not apply to everybody. Or that the research might have indicated that the conclusion that the author of the piece drew only applies under very specific conditions — which the author usually fails to mention.
But here is the caveat: increases in productivity are really difficult to track for most of us. Of course, at work we might have time sheets and reports that let us get a rough estimate of hours worked in comparison to projects completed, etc. But especially in today’s knowledge economy, it is almost impossible to measure these things with adequate precision. And that means that you as an individual have no way of effectively judging whether all these contradicting hacks work. All you know is, you spent a lot of hours reading articles about how to be more, better. Instead, you could have put in the time to actually become just that.
Here is what I “discovered” (actually, anybody applying a little bit of common sense could have cracked this one, and probably already has for themselves): there is no one way that works for everybody. I am even inclined to say that there is no one way that is going to constantly work for you. We are incredibly complex beings, in an ever increasingly complex world. And everything around us is in constant flux. This results in a myriad of combinations of causes and effects, circumstances and resulting constraints, etc. And what about the effect of our emotions — which also tend to not always be the most stable, right?
The thing you did a few years ago that made you feel great and energized and let you get a lot done? It might no longer work that well for you. Chances are that quite a few things in your life changed. You might have learned something new that changed your angle, so you needed to tweak your process accordingly. You might have a different job with different requirements. You could be in a different location, and suddenly your 1-hour morning jog no longer works because suddenly you have a longer commute. Or you started a family, and providing for little ones has added some feeling of pressure that no longer lets you approach projects and ideas with the same ease and carefreeness.
All these things do not necessarily mean that you are failing the one and only path. It only means that the requirements and constraints within which you work have changed, and you need to adapt accordingly. If that is what you wish.
Here is another thing: some of these articles start to sound and feel a little like Facebook. Just like, according to Facebook, there is always somebody new you should know, according to all these articles, there is always something new you should add to your routine, optimize your process here, improve your life there. While I do not wish to imply that you should be stagnant and simply maintain the status quo, I ask to carefully consider if constantly adding to our already complex lives is really the best idea. And if you think of your life, and the time and energy that you have available, you realize that both are finite resources. And constantly increasing, optimizing, improving, hacking away at these resources will not only strain, but eventually deplete them.
So if there is one thing you could actually do — and that is only if you are looking to change something: be mindful and conscious of what you do. Over time, you will realize what works best for you. What gets you in the flow. What makes you feel good about your work. Or ideally: what makes you feel good about yourself.
And if you struggle to find these things, and feel like you might be missing something, ask someone you trust to give you honest feedback. I believe that this was the most helpful thing I have ever done to become “better”. And once I realized what circumstances and situations contributed to me being at my best, I tried making changes to have these things occur more frequently. I am not done. Nor do I think I ever will be. Because at some point, something about myself and my life will change, and my search for how to make the best of it will start anew. But that’s ok. Somebody will write about it. I’m sure.
