Do The Thing
The biggest trap I’ve fallen into in terms of productivity is doing things in order for me to prepare to do The Thing.
In this context, The Thing is anything you want to get done, like do more yoga or read more books or writing more.
It is very easy to fall into this trap because there are thousands of people in the internet teaching “systems” and “routines” and “trackers” to help you do the thing. What I’ve noticed is that I end up using my time to implement these systems, or “meta-things” instead of doing the thing.
The meta-thing trap
Be careful to not spend more time on “meta-things” than “things”.
Of course routines are great, journaling is awesome (I love it) and planning your day is cool, but I used to believe that I was not being productive unless I didn’t do these “meta-things”. Like all things, they are tools to be used when it makes sense, and not as silver bullets that will change your life and turn you into a giga-grindset success god.
The most productive thing you can do.
Something that the meditations-for-mortals book mentions is that the most productive thing you can do is to choose a thing to do and do it. If you succesfully do this many times over, there is a chance that this will become a habit! Without even creating a fancy habit tracker in a note-taking app!
The meta-thinging spectrum
There is totally a spectrum of “meta-thinging”.
Living mindlessly ------------- Sometimes plans their week ----------------- Time-blocks the entire day and plans the tasks to detail, etc…
Even though there could be value in things that fall in the right end of the spectrum, I tend to be super-aware of if I measure my productivity in terms of meta-things. Thoughts like “my day is only fulfilling if I planned it and it went just as I planned” used to be on my mind, and it made me feel miserable to be honest. What I’ve realized is that lots of things that bring joy and fulfilment are the ones you can’t plan ahead (e.g. a sudden call from your friend), and the ones where you may not be in control of your time.
So there is a balance to be struck, living mindlessly is not ideal, but trying to exert total control of our time may not solve our problems too.
On Overwhelm
I think lots of people end up reaching for task management systems because they have lots of things to do and lots of things to stay mindful of, often to overwhelming levels.
But in today’s world, from what I’ve seen in my life, we are sometimes guilty of falling into distractions that derail us from focusing on what is really important, like news or spending too much time scrolling on tech.
So I’ve tried to remove as much unimportant stuff as I can from my life, by adopting a sort of minimalism mindset, and I feel like this has given me more mind space to focus on what really matters.