How to be more “productive” when you are unproductive

It is well known in the fitness community that you can train everyday but you probably can’t train yourself to death everyday. You need to pace yourself and allocate enough time to recover so you can come back much stronger. A lot of elite athletes attribute their longevity in sports to active recovery. Instead of idling or pushing to another hard training sessions, they all developed alternative ways and routines to get better even when they are not training. I was inspired by this interview with Lebron James and his trainer Mike Mancias on the Tim Ferriss Show.

Granted we are no Lebron James. However, we all sort of compete in our professional jobs, day in and day out. We go hard everyday and expect to excel in our own games. But we all have those days or moments during the day we feel just like a sloth. Sometimes, it is our physical body that calls for a break. Other times it could be just that our “Thinking Brain” is giving in to our “Feeling Brain”, according to “Everything is F*cked” by Mark Manson , and we need to negotiate with our “Feeling Brain” by trying out different things.

We are not machines so it is perfectly normal to have downtimes. However how you spend your downtime is going to play a big role in your up time. As a self-experimenter, I have been trying all sorts of things to leverage my downtime to mentally…