The Productivity Conundrum

The Productivity Conundrum: Why do we feel most days are unproductive? I kept thinking about this issue for quite some time. We do actual work only 20% of the time. Most of the time, we are in meetings, lunch, email, and chatting with co-workers. Being conscious of our productivity is important.

This excellent illustration from lizandmollie is a good starting point. You prioritize well, but anyway, you work on the wrong things.

Anxiety follows every quadrant and makes us miserable. Especially when we change careers, we might work with a new team of high performers. We used to be the best and are now somewhere in the middle. We need a slight recalibration to return to the learning curve and improve. If we don't, we might not perform well and are let go. We could be frustrated why this happens.

Next, failure to pick the high-leverage tasks: Identifying the task with the highest leverage is tricky - the gains are not immediate. Hence, our brain picks work with immediate gains, and we miss out on high-leverage work. The realizations keep making us miserable.

Also, true work feels painful in the short term but gains long-term gains. Doing what you enjoy can't make a career in the long term. Most things we do are not things we LOVE to do, so the resistance is normal.

None of the productivity YouTubers you see are grinding 24/7. They have avenues to chill without feeling guilty. Thinking of work systems instead of work output seems to be the key. Their advice:

• Find things you enjoy doing and try incorporating them into your free time. This will help you to stay motivated and productive.

• Don't be afraid to procrastinate a little, but make sure to finish your work at the end of the week.

• Use your free time to learn new things and stay creative. This will help you develop new ideas and improve your productivity.

• Don't be afraid to indulge in your guilty pleasures now and then. It's important to allow yourself to relax and enjoy your free time.

• Don't compare yourself to other productivity YouTubers. Everyone is different and has a unique way of being productive. Be self-aware of our strengths and weaknesses. Know that there are people more productive than us, and we can still learn.

Takeaway 1: Set a threshold to define a productive day. Though you don't work directly on products, you try to approach everything from the product lens. Like MVP, we need Minimum Viable Productivity. Define ONE imp task - Once done, define the day to be productive.

Takeaway 2: Chill guilt-free. Keep rewarding ourselves with a time-boxed chilling schedule. Sneak in things we enjoy in between things we work on. Only doing things we enjoy might not be practical.

Takeaway 3: Ok to be suboptimal. If you can operate at 80% efficiency and enjoy yourselves, that is good enough in the long run. Always operating at 100% might burn us out.

Caveat: We need to work on ourselves to keep improving.

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