cross-posted on Medium
I reread what I wrote the other day and wanted to punch myself in the face.
“Geez I sound whiny. Maybe I should unpublished that.”
“Shut up, self-deprecating voice in my head! I shouldn’t self censor. I should just write, I don’t care what people think.”
“Ha! You’re just telling yourself that. You absolutely care, just like everyone else does, because humans are generally neurotic.”
“Are you sure about that? Anyway…I’ll just write something else that is a bit positive, happy, funny, then we’ll feel better. ”
“You? Funny? Ok, I’ll give you that, you are funny, but only to the 7 people in the world who share your sense of humor. Also, if you’re writing it, people are bound to take it out of context making you look like an asshole.”
“You’re an asshole.”
Sorry about that. Really I just wanted to comment on those “be productive”, “be happier”, “be better” tips I always get. The meta comment is “eye roll”
Personal Tips
- Stop watching so much TV: Bad idea. This one time I was 2 years late on even starting Game of Thrones. I didn’t understand half of what was going on at work, everyone was talking in a language and making references I couldn’t understand. It got so bad that I binge watched the first 3 seasons in a week. My productivity went straight up after that week. Also, my eyes bled.
- Set ambitious, yet realistic goals: Or set no goals at all, as the other 50% of Productivity and Happiness literature recommends. Your choice (suckers)!
- Reward yourself for motivation: I don’t even know what this means. If I feel motivated, I should reward myself? Hmm…I think I should reward myself now because I feel motivated to feel motivated to reward myself.
- Constantly ask yourself if you what are doing presently is productive: Define “productive” again? I’m presently writing a post about how silly productivity tips are. Is that productive? Also, that word “constantly” scares the crap out of me. What if I forget? Do I have to start over?
Morning Tips:
- Sleep early and get up early: Nope. I have tried every goddamn thing in the world to become a morning person. I took a MOOC on becoming a morning person, I bought a nice espresso machine, I bought a sunlight clock thingie, I went to bed at 8pm, I quit drinking alcohol, I started hanging out with morning people. Nothing works. I am not a morning person. I was a morning person for 2 weeks once, but I was without any technology (including light bulbs), in the jungle. Fact is, you can’t fake the natural circadian rhythm, and mine is f’d up from our modern world.
- Start the day with structured ‘me time’:
- — Breakfast: Sometimes breakfast is good, but not in the morning and not during the week. I recommend sleeping until 10 minutes before work and then guzzling coffee until noonish. Then have “breakfast” followed by more coffee.
- —Meditation: Learn how to meditate. I can’t even pretend to be snarky on the meditation thing. Though I can say: Read the neuroscience people, not the esoteric horse shit. Brains are fascinating.
- —Exercise: I usually don’t exercise in the morning, so the effects of exercise are worthless to me. I would say you should probably exercise for your heart and your mood rather than being “productive”, but if you’re motivated to exercise so you can be more “successful” in your career…whatevs.
- — Cold Shower: Ok, I have a friend who swears by the cold shower, but he’s just bananas. Cold showers suck. They make you cold, not productive. I’d wait until you are forced to take a cold shower. That way you can bitch about the coldness (because if you choose this, you aren’t allowed to complain.)
- Use commute time to complete coordination tasks: Wrong again! Don’t try to be productive on a commute, you’ll miss out on really batshit crazy life stuff. Use commute time to look at all the ridiculous human beings in the world. Fascinating!
- Do the hardest task first: Maybe my difficult tasks are just much more conceptual than the productivity-tip-writer’s tasks? When I have a difficult task, I wait for inspiration to strike. Seriously, I read and write and learn and eventually inputs click together to spark a direction. Ain’t no way I can do my hardest tasks first, that’s why they’re hard.
General Tips
- Create to-do lists: More checkmarks make you feel more productive, so be sure to include “wake up” and “brush teeth”.
- Batch Process: Oh wouldn’t it be nice if my brain could do this on a regular basis! I say to myself “I’m going to do email for the next hour” and try to batch process emails. Then I get distracted by what the emails actually say.
- Designate times to handle e-mail: So my hour becomes three because I slot in some tasks based on what those emails say. Sometimes the emails says “Can you comment on X” and that becomes a non-email task. So now I’m left wondering if I’ve stepped outside of the designated email time and if I’m still batch processing. This stresses me out and I feel like I need to remember to:
- Take breaks: But the I haven’t been productive enough to take a break because I got distracted from my email time and batch processing! So I save up those breaks and then on Friday afternoon when my brain goes full on dead, I don’t feel guilty about taking off. Because by then I forgot that I got distracted during email time.
- Switch off notifications and other distractions: Because then you have no idea what’s going on and can spend 2 hours watching cat videos without feeling guilty! Just don’t do it during email time.
At Work Tips
- Seek help / Delegate tasks accordingly: But don’t forget “If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.”
- Say no: Say yes to everything, then ignore that which is not important. If it isn’t important to you, surely it’s not important to anyone else and people will forget about it. If they don’t, the appropriate response is “yes, it’s on my to do list.” They will think you are organized.
- Do not get sucked into unnecessary meetings: Actually, unnecessary meetings are great places to sit back and think about how unnecessary meetings are. Some of my most brilliant insights have come from the lack of attention I’ve paid during meetings that I knew were unnecessary. I recommend coming up with some responses that work in any situation. That way, when people ask you what you think, you can say “My gut tells me that’s a good idea, but I’d like to review the metrics before we commit.”
- Consolidate the number of places you need to go for information: Consolidate it in your inbox. Order newsletters from every site, then complain-brag about how much email you get.
- Spend a few minutes preparing for the next day: Or, alternatively, plan nothing, do everything, appreciate yourself for being so diverse.