Productivity — you don’t need to do more stuff; the stuff you do needs to do more for you

Most of what I’ve ever read about productivity has been written on the premise that you just need to squeeze more out of your day. Personally, I don’t want to get up at 4am to workout like The Rock; I don’t want my calendar arranged in 15 minute joyless Tetris blocks; and I certainly don’t want to live my life like a machine to be optimised. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with those things; they just don’t resonate with me and my get-up-when-you-feel-like-it-and-have-a-cup-of-tea-in-bed type of mindset.

I recently read ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ by Oliver Burkeman, after a friend recommended it. It’s a brilliant book written around the premise that, if you’re lucky, you’ll live for 4000 weeks on this planet, and that most of the stresses and strains in relation to ‘productivity’ come from a fundamental failure to embrace the constraints of time and prioritise accordingly.

That constraint-embracing mindset has served as a really simple yet powerful tool for me to reframe how it is that I spend my time, and to treat it much more as a question of prioritisation vs. one of productivity. Below I’ve outlined a few of the pitfalls I’ve succumbed to, as well as a few of the practical tactics I’ve found helpful over the years.

Pitfalls to avoid:

• Clear the decks mentality — this is one that I’m sure a few of you will recognise. You know when you have that big and important thing to do, but instead of doing it, you tell yourself that you need to create space and optimal conditions to get it done — you’re clearing the decks. Unfortunately this often just serves as a distraction from the main event — trust me when I say that your inbox does not need to be at zero, and the lawn does not need to be mown, before the task at hand gets done.
• When everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority — the process of prioritisation requires you to make a choice. I know there’s a lot of stuff, and I know a lot of it seems important right now, but if your process of prioritisation doesn’t feel deeply uncomfortable because you’re deciding not to do something that seems important, then you’re probably not doing it right.
• Trying to create order out of chaos — I’m definitely guilty of this at times- trying to over-analyse a situation to create a sense of order. Sometimes this skill can be highly valuable, but it’s also important to acknowledge that the universe is just one big system of chaos — sometimes you have to stop trying to bend it to your will and embrace a bit of that chaos and uncertainty.
• Paralysis of choice — ever spent an hour trawling through Netflix trying to find the perfect show to watch? I know I have. Most people’s minds don’t cope well when presented with too many options in-the-moment.
• Hustle culture — a term used for a certain type of can-do attitude in the extreme, where any failure on your part to get things done is because you’re not hustling hard enough.

Practical tactics I’ve found helpful:

You’ll notice that these are all extremely simple — for me, the simpler the better, as I find it’s then much easier to embed it in my routine.

• 3 things this week, 1 thing today — this has been the most consistent thing that’s worked for me and stood the test of time. At the start of each week, I spend some time thinking about my critical priorities and write down the three big things I want to get done that week, then I try to orient my calendar around those things — if I see that I have loads of other meetings not relating to those things then I’ll look to cancel or reschedule them. I repeat that same process daily with ‘1 thing today’. At the end of the week I take a few minutes to reflect on whether I got the things done, and if not, why not.
• Calendar over to-do list — that’s not to say that a to-do list isn’t really useful; but the problem is that there’s no cutoff — it can just keep growing and growing, and with it your stress levels will often do the same. By utilising my calendar, not just as a graveyard for meetings, but actually scheduling specific working blocks for specific topics then I’m forced to confront the reality of how much time I have in the week, what I can actually commit to or not, and where I might need to reprioritise.
• Understand what type of work to do when — I’m pretty lucid in the morning but entirely useless for about an hour or two after lunch; so for me, a working block dedicated to a hard, brain-work type of problem is best placed in the morning, whereas after lunch can often be dedicated to more mundane tasks.
• Less time on social media — pretty much the stock answer for a debate on any of the world’s problems these days. I do use some social media but try to keep it limited, and I’ve happily optimised my algorithms for dog content and not a lot else. One of the better ways of keeping myself on track here is to replace my phone with a book — that 10 minutes I used to spend scrolling first thing in the morning is now (usually) spent reading. Some wouldn’t consider it a ‘productive’ use of time, but it does at least mean I’m allowing myself to focus on one thing rather than bombarding my brain with thousands of things as I scroll.
• Choose a few things and care about them deeply. Ignore the rest — our default existence today often involves spreading ourselves a mile wide but an inch deep, by engaging in so many different things but in very shallow (and often meaningless) ways. This can apply equally to work, relationships, hobbies, causes etc. I wish I had the bandwidth to care about, understand and take action in relation to all of the world’s problems, but I don’t, so I’d rather pick a few and engage with them deeply.