I started off this year with a 365-day challenge: I would work at least two hours on one (or several) of my projects every day for a year. I failed this challenge miserably a couple of months into the year, but I learned some pretty valuable insights that I’d like to share.
A tool that I often like to use is the tool of reframing, and the tool of reframing the relationships that I have with different aspects of life. I’ve always struggled with productivity. More specifically, I’ve always struggled with follow-through and being productive in a consistent manner such that my projects actually get finished. In other words, my relationship with consistency and productivity was not very good, and I wanted to change that, hence the 365-day challenge I set for myself. At the start of the new year, my hopes were that by the end of the year, I would’ve completed projects left and right, and I would’ve transformed my relationship with productivity in a positive direction. The transformation part actually did happen, but not in the way that I expected, and this is what I’m getting at in this post.
TL;DR: If you want to be productive, and consistently too, try focusing on your attitude and mindset around the work itself. Structure your environment around you to keep your focus locked on the project at hand. Avoid negative people like the plague. Seriously…
The Problem with Self-Discipline
Initially, I tried the self-discipline approach of just forcing myself to work a set amount of hours every day. This actually did yield some results, but they were pretty lackluster, and the work was totally uninspired. In fact, framing this challenge as a self-discipline challenge took away all of the joy of working on my projects, and my priorities shifted towards making sure I sat in front of my computer and working for a certain amount of time, and then I could move on with my day. This was, in hindsight, a bad idea because the work that I did didn’t result to much at all. Self-discipline is a really useful tool, but it’s just one tool out of many, and my mistake was that I was trying to solve the problem of consistency with the wrong tool.
It turns out that harmony was a much better tool to use here. When I framed this as a self-discipline challenge, I stopped caring about the project itself. My priority shifted from doing actual productive work to instead completing the “quota” of work hours every day. I began caring more about sitting in front of the computer screen and doing busy-work as opposed to making meaningful progress.
So, the solution here was a lot more gentle. After I missed a day of work (because I was helping a friend move), I actually felt more relieved than disappointed. I could finally give myself permission to breathe, and to remove the unneeded stress from my work days. My perspective shifted from working a set amount of hours to instead fostering a healthy positive relationship with productivity itself, and creativity too, because my projects are all very creative in nature.
I started focusing on why I was resisting doing the work in the first place, and what I could do to make sure that I was enjoying the work more. I thought a lot about my attitude and preconceptions of productivity, and quickly realized I’m an idiot that knows nothing. Productivity is a skill, and consistent productivity is a set of skills.
I could literally feel my motivation building up the more I worked on the relationship itself, and how I wanted to experience my work days. I didn’t want (and still don’t) to feel stressed about my work, and feel like I needed to work every day. Ironically, this shift in perspective gave me so much motivation that it’s really hard to pull away from work now… But I still struggled with consistency and follow-through.
How to Stay Consistent
Man, this has been my main challenge for as long as I can remember, but I made some big gains in this area this year. When I started framing my work differently, my motivation soared, but I was jumping sporadically from project to project, never finishing anything. Can you relate? 😉
From what I’ve learned so far, I would say that there are two components to the skill of being consistent: state management, and optimizing your workflow to fit your personality.
State Management
If you’re anything like me, your focus is like a cat chasing a laser. One day you want to make a website, and the next day, you’d like to become a boxer. You feel like you’re dragged in a thousand different directions, all at the same time. You’re not good at managing your state.
Pay attention to what you’re doing whenever your focus shifts towards something else. All this time, I thought my focus changed because I would get bored with my current project, but I eventually realized that this is not really true. Sometimes it can be, but that’s usually a hint and a half that I chose the wrong project to work on to begin with; another key lesson that I learned, actually.
Instead, it turns out that my focus shifts to something else because I get distracted. Specifically, I get excited about another idea, and I can’t bring myself back to my original project. This is a huge problem with people like me who get excited about new ideas easily. For me, this usually happens because I read about something interesting, or I watch a video about an interesting topic, and then I get all excited, and I start having ideas. This is not actually a bad thing, unless you want to be consistent…
The solution here, for me at least, is to create a scaffolding around your current project that tethers you to it, and the energy of it too. If you don’t like the word energy, substitute it with any word you like: emotion, feeling, mindset, etc. The point is, you need to be very intentional about the following:
- How long will you be working on this project?
- Do you need to finish the project in one go, or can you work on it on and off?
- What are some possible distractions that can pop up for you that can take away your focus from the project at hand?
I’ll give you a concrete example: making a YouTube video. Starting my YouTube channel was actually my main priority this year, but because of my creative anxiety and a set of other issues (my relationship with video editing and filming was not the best, but I made some gains in that area too now), I put it off for almost the entire year, and only recently got serious about it.
I don’t need to finish the project in one sitting, or to allocate contiguous chunks of time for working on the video; instead, I’ll work on the project in bursts because that fits my personality better. More on that later in this post.
To create a scaffolding for this project, I do the following:
- I make sure that for the duration of time I’ve decided to spend working on this project, I will not consume content that’s about anything else other than what is relevant for the project itself. This was not actually as hard as I thought it would be
- I make sure that I don’t have other pressing matters that need my attention when I’m working on the video
- I carefully pay attention to how I’m feeling about the video, and if any negative thoughts pop up, I need to address them, and make sure I’m okay before continuing
- I need to make sure I’m in a good mood because it’s really hard to be creative if you’re working from a place of negativity. This is key.
- I must review my goals for this project, and my plans for the project, first thing in the morning (or evening…) when I wake up. If I don’t, it’s too easy for me to get distracted, and I set myself up for a day of poor productivity
- Be flexible with the items on my to-do list. If I feel more inspired to go in a certain direction (as long as it will make meaningful progress for my video), I’ll usually do that, which might sound counterintuitive, but it works pretty well.
- Exercise, and be healthy!!
Structuring the environment around you to support you is also something that’s very useful, especially for long-term projects. I like having supportive friends, and I do, and I can’t tolerate any social drag from people who are generally negative and non-supportive. Let’s put it this way: if someone tells me that my video idea is “cringe” or that it’s not going to work, that is a creativity killer right there. Even if they mean well, the truth is that as a beginner, most of my videos will be cringe anyway, and that’s okay. If I start caring too much about that, I lose my motivation almost instantly. Funny how that works…
Optimizing Your Workflow
Are you the type of person that can work a little bit each day, and enjoy seeing the incremental progress being made towards the completion of the project? Or are you more of an all-or-nothing kind of person where you work like a maniac for a week, and then you take a break for a month, or a year? Or maybe you’re somewhere in-between? You don’t know yet? You better find out, because that’s really useful information to have.
I’m in the latter category. I’m just incapable of working a little bit each day; I need to dive in fully, and immerse myself in the project deeply. However, as I’ve gotten better at state management this past year, I find myself being able to work on these projects for longer and longer, despite working 12-hour days at times. When I do things right, it’s not even hard to do this. Granted, I still mess up at times; I’m not perfect, but I’m getting better, and pretty fast too.
I highly suggest you experiment here if you haven’t already. I still am, and it’s super interesting to see just how much more I can get done as I study myself more and more. And that’s really what’s at the core of it all: as you study yourself and find what makes you tick, you can leverage those insights to find your own way of working that allows you to be productive too.
Plans for 2025
I have finally gotten the ball rolling on my main priority, and my main priority is YouTube. I’m deeply passionate about content creation, and this will be my main priority for next year too. As sort of a side thing, I will also focus on making sure that I’m as healthy as positive because it’s hard to be motivated if you’re eating like shit, and not being in shape. Wow, who would’ve thought…?