Rules to Be at Your Productive Best
In under 2 minutes
Productivity is not an event. It’s a muscle you have to keep flexing. And it’s a muscle that you need to flex in a wide variety of circumstances.
This latter point hit home for me this Friday. Why? Because I had hardly started this daily writing thing when I realized that I’ll be at my in-laws next week, and will be travelling for another week. I could let this deter me from my writing, or I could just do my best to write everyday, maybe by being a bit more creative with my writing so I don’t have to spend as much time on it while I am on my holiday.
I decided to be creative.
After running some ideas through my head, I settled on a ‘rules for’ kind of series, where I will be writing rules for a variety of things like productivity, writing, handling chores and yes, even working while travelling, in a short, bullet based format. I have always been curious about wrting super short blog posts, so who knows, this might just become the new favorite format for me and my audience?
Today marks the first day of the rules, so let’s begin with productivity! Get, set, go:
- Your productivity needs a purpose
- Productivity is less about feeling it and more about doing it
- Your tools only matter as much as the time you spend at work
- The value of your tools is inversely proportional to the time you have to spend managing them
- A happy soul is a productive soul
- Taking breaks is a strategy
- Plan, research and go in a 2:1:5 ratio
- Productivity does NOT mean neglecting fun
- Working too much is getting too burned out to work anymore
- The small things matter, too
- Nature is nurture for the mind
- Busywork is not being productive. Checking emails is not being productive
- Productivity comes after self care
- A productive life begins outside of your phone
- Productivity is not about rushing
- Relationships before work
- Boredom is a creativity booster, creativity is a productivity booster
- Some things are worth wasting time on
- Activate the body to activate the mind
- Being busy is not cool
- Perfection is the greatest productivity killer
- Procrastinating may look like working
- Your productivity is not defined by others
- Gotta do them chores too!
- A successful life is more than a busy life
- Keep some hobbies
- Take a walk
- Some skills are worth more than your resume
- Productivity is more than the numbers
- Your mind is a wonderful creature. Don’t kill it to make a machine
That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed these short, freeform thoughts on productivity as much as I enjoyed coming up with, and writing about, them. I wish I could spend more time elaborating on these points, but that’s not what this exercise is about. Gotta keep going, perfection be damned!
Which thought do you resonate the best with, or is something you feel you need to remember? Would you like to add anything else to this list? Do let me know in the comments!
