10 Productivity Hacks to Keep You an Effective Member of the Capitalist Grind
Another day, another email in my inbox telling me to punch today in the face.
Published in
3 min readMay 15, 2018
- Wake up at 5am. Those morning folk are onto something. They enjoy more daylight hours, and this prevents depression. This is why they’re obnoxiously cheery and you’re hopeless and depressed. Yes, actually. The reason you’re hopeless and depressed is because you don’t wake up at 5am.
- Take a cold shower. Waking up before dawn isn’t torture enough. You should actually be depriving your morning routine of all pleasures. Don’t forget to leave the window open, because an arctic breeze upon exit is good for productivity.
- Work at a standing desk. Or better yet, work at a walking desk. Walking while working will mean your twelve hour work days are over in the glimpse of an eye. Alongside your youth and chances of settling before 30.
- Meditate. Be mindful of what you’re thinking. Detach yourself from the stresses you cannot control. Breath. Remember to send your budget estimates in by 4pm. Breath. Budget. 4pm. Breath. Budget.
- Write a list. Number tasks in order of importance. Use a fucking four-color pen. Get all Santa Claus up in it. Have your first task be finish list. Job well done. Golf clap.
- Fast. Depriving your body of food for longer periods of time means your body can focus on being healthy, instead of tediously digesting the sustenance you need to live. Fasting also gives you a legitimate reason to be a hangry dickhead in meetings. If you’re called out on said dickhead behavior, remind your colleagues that Elon Musk didn’t build Tesla with a morning belly full of granola and cashew milk. No he did not.
- Exercise. Growth-hack the fuck out of your fitness by signing up to Barry’s Bootcamp AND Cross Fit. You now have two reasons to be really fucking annoying. You also can’t walk for three days.
Alternatively, refer to point 3, ‘work at a standing desk’. - Check your inbox twice a day. Ensure your coworkers endure either an eight or sixteen hour reply time to all important communications. When you do eventually reply, send all emails in comic sans. Congratulate yourself on not becoming a slave to the inbox.
- Learn to say no. Your time is valuable and you need to get shit done. Learn to tell your colleagues you have other priorities today. Learn to tell your colleagues you don’t have time. Actually, learn to tell your colleagues to fuck right off.
Unless you’re female, then kindly inform your colleagues you will be tending to their requests momentarily and apologize profusely for the delay. - Rid yourself of distractions. Buy noise cancelling headphones and play cafe noise. Embrace a focus technique named after a fucking tomato. Disable your push notifications. Block Facebook from your browser. Turn off that brush sound Slack plays. Tell colleagues to fuck off. Remove unnecessary apps from your laptop. Remove unnecessary apps from your iPhone. Remove your iPhone. Just throw it out the fucking window. Let someone else be distracted by your iPhone falling from a fucking window. You don’t need it. You just need to punch today in the face.
