Redefining Productivity For The Unmotivated

Hi, my name is Niki and I am a time-blocking, list making, schedule loving creature who speed clicks on articles like:

Daily Habits of Productive People!

How To Be More Productive With These 5 Life-Changing Hacks!

Time Management Strategies That Work

How To Prioritize Your Life With The 80/20 Rule

How To Do This And That So That You Turn Into An Over-Achiever That Then Starts Crumbling With The Onset Of The Thought Of Not Doing Anything Worthwhile In Life.

Ok, maybe not the last one.

But it’s true for the most part. I like doing a lot with my time because it makes me feel like I am progressing somewhere and doing something with my life. I like being busy and having a packed schedule and the concept of spontaneity and ‘chill’ was very dormant in my vocabulary.

That is till last year where I chose to let go of my over-planning birthday habit and simply decided to learn how to be spontaneous in the smallest capacity. It wasn’t a lot. But it was a start.

Fast forward to this year where I was just taking baby steps with the idea of being ok with an unclear schedule and sudden plans. But then, the world decided to take another turn making the word ‘uncertainty’ the theme for the rest of the year.

At first, I was in complete denial of letting any of this affect me.

Battling the pride of a productivity junkie

Out came the notebooks, the list of ‘things I always wanted to do, but never had the time’ the life goals, the checklists, the timetables, and everything I could need to ensure the next few months were not a pause, but just a small blip in my life.

Everything would still go as planned, so might as well make the most of whatever this is.

God, was I wrong.

First came the sudden change in your working environment, and finding means to make it work for you. Once you get used to that, then came the change in your daily life. Once you got used to that too, then came the ups and downs of every day that were just out of your control.

No matter how much you tried to control it, no matter how much you planned and planned and organized and organized, nothing went according to your checklist. Not your work, not your emotions, not your attitude, not even the damn internet speed.

So naturally, you’d feel pathetic. When nothing goes your way, you stop making an effort to plan in the first place. The productivity junkie in your starts suffering from a case of cold turkey stagnation with a side of play-by-ear syndrome.

Overdoing overnight motivation hacks

But a small part of you that has been strongly attuned to the habit of productivity for so many years still chooses to muster whatever that’s left and fight it. You refuse to accept defeat because society tells us to never give up and ‘snap’ out of this state of befuddlement with nearly instant tips.

You read more articles on how to get out of a slump, you start learning new things, you indulge in new hobbies, you paint, you start picking up more books to read, you watch documentaries, you start working out, you cut down sugar, you start cooking, you do whatever it takes to squeeze out any part of slump left in your possible.

You over-do the hacks that are ‘apparently’ supposed to get you back into the circles of motivation. You try to squeeze out that little stubborn pimple of dissatisfaction and your desperacy causes you to go overboard. 

Tomorrow, you will wake up and go for a walk at 6 am. Tomorrow, you have decided to change the rest of your life. Tomorrow, everything will turn over including you and you will ‘snap’ out of this funk once and for all. Tomorrow you will get the clarity you need. Tomorrow.

But ask yourself, how many times you have false promised your brain into admitting that you are not going to change overnight? And the very same things you indulge in now seem like heavy tasks that you must do because you need to prove to yourself about how productive you are. But what you started with full gusto is now just daunting. It’s too much and burning you out instead of inspiring you.

Well, that’s what happened to me. And it killed my will. I swung in the whole other direction. A stressful workweek was met with a 14-hour sleep-a-thon and the desire to stay in bed all day watching KDramas and then feeling this burdening sense of guilt on a Sunday night. For the first time, in a long time, I wanted to literally do nothing with my life.

And that brought on that sense of fear again. The same fear why I wanted to be productive in the first place- the feeling of doing something to make me feel like my life was heading somewhere. That sense of accomplishment was hitting me again and I felt like there was no escaping it.

Unlearning & re-inventing what you consider productivity

So, I wasted a few more weeks with this crushing guilt. Till, something funny happened. Because I was ‘wasting’ my time in regular perceptions, I started reading more frilly books instead of inspirational/motivational/educational ones and I started watching more casual shows instead of something regular perceptions would consider useful. With every book I finished, with every show I watched, I was oddly left with a feeling of accomplishment. With every day that went by where I didn’t feel miserable at night, I’d feel that same sense of accomplishment again. With every immediate household chore I completed, weirdly again I’d feel like I did something worthwhile.

It wasn’t a big task, it wasn’t mind-blowing or self-improving or future bettering, it was just making the beds, clearing my inbox, organizing the laundry, checking in on a peaceful panic-free workday, chopping the potatoes and onions before dinner and hitting 5k steps within the house. It was the small stuff, the inconsequential stuff, the things that really don’t matter in the long run. And for those few weeks, what I would usually consider insignificant, suddenly made itself into a metric of achievement.

So my fellow time-table lovers, guess what?

Maybe we have over-glorified hustle and hard work so much that we have started comparing achievements with ourselves to how big an impact it has.

As someone I know rightly said, we wear our puffy eyes, dark circles, break-free weekends and ‘mentally exhausted’ brains as badges of honour instead of really looking into how it’s serving us.

Maybe the ones who are the most productive are not the hustle, go-go-go getters, but the ones who seem to navigate every day with a calm and collected sense of reality. And smartly reserve that energy for when it matters the most.

We have equalized productivity to the very same hustle, where unbeknown to us, we may have started feeling superior to other people who may not even be interested in achieving so much. So to outdo them, we try harder, we go harder, and we develop this negative sense of competition to prove to them, the world and to ourselves that I am a hard worker because I got 10x more things done than you.

Maybe what we consider as blanket productivity needs to change.

So what is productivity, finally?

Honestly, I don’t think I can completely answer this question anymore. Because I still like to plan and organize things to keep my mind sane, but I no longer attribute productivity to how organized I am.

Now it’s more along the lines of: I do what I need to do and I do what needs to be done. That’s it.

Productivity no longer has quantified itself into quantity and the insanity of a checklist after checklist. You just do what needs to be done responsibly and preferably if you have a job, do it on time.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone has their own metrics of accomplishment and success and it’s better we learn to respect that. Arguably, we can then issue doing the bare minimum as a mammoth of a task and encourage that culture, but for now, let’s go with the assumption that everyone wants to do a lot with their lives, and the guilt of not doing enough should now be re-invented and diverted to just simply doing what needs to be done every day.

Whether its chores in the house or completing activities at work. The hustle parameter is now well-modulated and regulated to the task on hand.

That’s pretty much it. It sounds simple, and the optimistic part of me would like to believe it.

Getting comfortable with the aspect of variability

But unlike the standard rules of productivity, maybe not everything can fit itself into an existing formula anymore. At least not in the world we live in right now.

Not everything can be standardized, at least not as much as we like to believe.

And where we were wired to think of measurements of success as a quantifiable thing, maybe we need to change that landscape too. So maybe, just maybe, productivity is as variable as the feeling of accomplishment you get after you do the task.

And we need to (I need to) be ohkay with that. Knowing that not everything is in my control, knowing that I cannot routine my day, moods and tasks as much as I would like to. And I shouldn’t feel bad if I got more done on one day and not the other. Provided I did everything I had to do, and what needed to be done. Nothing more, and preferably nothing less.

We need to be okay with the variable methods of organization and planning. And learn to adapt to the situation as and when it requires it.

Planning in realistic smaller capacities as much as you can

The pragmatic part of me would still want to stick to a system of sorts so I don’t go too astray, and justify doing the bare minimum as a habit, so I try to plan (try being the keyword here) in way smaller capacities.

I try to plan my life tomorrow, or for the second half of the day. I try to have a general plan for life admin work for the weekend. I try to build an overview for the week or a task to do the next weekend. As and when work comes in, or I have chores to do. With plenty of space for change in priority, time, and framework- something I hadn’t really accounted for before.

Not too much, not too little. Not too ambitious where I feel awful for its shortcoming, with just the right amount of self-check. One task, one activity, one day/week at a time.

And this is me talking about my personal life. For my job, the formula and requirement is quite different. It’s faster, hectic, and often energy-depleting. So even navigating the remnants of my energy into other things requires some prioritizing.

You see? Not everything can be standardized anymore. Your sources of productivity and accomplishment can be very different things these days. Where one day I feel good about finishing work on time, the other day I feel good about just not stressing out despite having a million work things to do.

Both productive, just different results.

Learning how to checklists and check moods

I know it’s important to know how you’re feeling every day but what if you feel too much to a point where you prioritize your emotions unreasonably over the reality of the situation?

I feel moody today so I cannot give my best at work and I will lapse on my timelines. Are you giving yourself permission to justify what you feel?

I don’t know, it’s a tricky question and a pretty broad assumption. We are all allowed to feel the way we feel, but I think we need to check ourselves in that realm as well if we want to feel productive even in our emotions. You can’t be moody for 3 days straight and justify your unaccountability at work. Nor can you be upset for a few days and then feel bad about not doing anything productive.

Check your mood to customize your checklist sure, but not the point where you can’t see beyond yourself. Be in tune with how you feel, and do what needs to be done irrespective. The more room we give ourselves to wallow, I think the more reasons everything else turns into a by-product of your mental state.

Do what need to do, and do what needs to be done.

Do what you need to do to feel better, but also do what needs to be done with work and your daily life. A bad workday cannot dictate your emotions for the first free weekend in months, right? So check your mood but also check your lists.

Doing what feels right

As contrasting as this statement sounds to everything I said above, the biggest thing the last few months have also taught me is to do what feels right in situations where you don’t know what to do.

This might sound ridiculous, but I have given myself grief over not sticking to a healthy night routine by reading a book before bed to avoid screen time. But I really, really, want to watch BTS videos before bed. But no, you must be productive at night and set a routine. But my heart wants to watch all the HYYM videos (if you know, you know) today.

I can’t help but laugh while I type this, for the sheer ridiculousness of how guilty I felt. Oh my god.

Doing what feels right is more intuitive in situations where you don’t know how to navigate a ready, tried and tested productivity formula. Like, if you have a lot of things to do at work, but you have a few things to do for your family, both are tearing you apart in guilt burdened hemispheres, so what do you do?

You do what feels right. In some situations work takes priority and it some cases it doesn’t.

Similarly, our world today probably needs to be navigated in a familiar manner.

Nothing seems to be set in stone these days. There may be the right things to do, but there is no right way to do things anymore (unless you’re eating roti with a fork), so it’s fair to say that given certain situations, its ohkay to do just what feels right in the moment.

Right is not necessarily good, right can also be stringent and hard, but something that releases the burden of unrequired guilt of not doing enough.

The last few months have been interesting to say the least, and my motto for when anyone asks me ‘How are you?’ is pretty standard: I am doing the best I can.

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, or is it enough or insufficient. But it’s what feels right, it’s what I have to offer, it what makes me feel like I am able to navigate through some amount of uncertainty. And for now, this should be enough.

So if you are struggling with finding a balance/result-oriented solution to what to make of your bigger life goals, then simply put, take it one day at a time. As long as you have a roof over your head, people who care for you, and a hot meal whenever you wish, life can’t be so bad right?

If you’re feeling quite stuck and unmotivated these days then I hope you learn to overcome the hard expectations you have put on yourself and your life. And maybe see if there is something that you can attribute from there, with just the right amount of self-check.

Productivity can be over-rated, sure. But it also helps us determine with how we spend our time wisely. In the world of today, making the most of your time is not valued as much as doing more in a set time frame and hopefully with a day at a time, we can change that.

Maybe you will now see the value of how you do certain things instead of how much you do of it. Maybe productivity should now be a scale for how you handle certain situations, instead of how many situations you handle. Maybe a productive person is just a happier person and not necessarily a monetarily successful individual.

Maybe, just maybe, I may feel differently about this entire concept tomorrow. But today, I think this is what feels right. So I am going to roll with it. Doing what I need to do, and doing what needs to be done. One day at a time.

May you redefine productivity in your own balanced way,

Niki :)