Working or Being Productive?

I used to make myself busy every waking hour. I convinced myself that I was being super productive because I was working so much.

What would happen if we boiled down our work into the essentials each day?

Hack away the filler, the stuff we do because it makes us feel good, and leave the essentials to be done.

You’ll probably get everything done in 6 hours and feel incredible.

To be fully transparent, this is something that I still do not do to this day. I waste away hours every single day avoiding the important things and filling in work that feels good to do but isn’t all that productive.

Be more stupid more often

What if you’re more wrong than you think? What if you’re just afraid and your defense mechanism is simplifying and calling everything stupid?

Are you willing to admit you’re wrong if someone else does that “stupid” thing and it’s a success?

Next time you’re sure it’s stupid, who cares? Do it anyway and maybe you’ll have a more interesting (and therefore more creative) life.

Embrace the pain

When you lose or face adversity, soak it all in. Every last drop of pain. Don’t worry about your emotional state. That will get stronger as you confront more pain.

Maybe your boss doesn’t like what you did, maybe the client just left you a bad review, maybe you just got fired, or maybe the comments section is ripping you apart. Face the pain. Don’t run from it.

You become greater than you were yesterday not by loving to win. We all love to win. You become great by hating to lose.

The more you embrace the pain and feel every bit of it, the stronger you become and the more you will have a burning hatred for losing.

Don’t run, embrace the pain. It’s rocket fuel for production and longer-term happiness.

Don’t prioritize things

Productivity tip #20 and the final tip I have to share is this: don’t prioritize things. Do the stuff you feel like when you feel like it. If you never feel like doing something, just don’t do it!

Why sit down and immediately get difficult things done, when you can noodle along and do the stuff you feel like as slowly as you like? That way, by the time you get to the difficult stuff you’re more tired and have less self-discipline because you’ve used up a bunch of energy doing easier stuff first.

Don’t start, instead, wait for motivation.

Don’t prioritize, instead, do what you feel like. That’s what you should be doing anyway.

Don’t do what you don’t feel like doing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my list of very tips for being both very happy and very productive. Now, go do the opposite if you actually want to make things happen.

Be inflexible and judgmental

For productivity tip #19 I’m going to focus on self-importance. It’s kind of been a theme through a bunch of these tips.

The greater you elevate yourself, the better things will go for you. Be as inflexible as possible. Everyone’s schedule should bend to you, after all.

Also, re-affirm your superiority by making sure to pass judgment on every little thing that the people around you do.

It doesn’t matter how simple to inconsequential that thing is, make sure you belittle them and let them know how insufficient their effort it.

When you don’t say anything outlaid, make sure to pass harsh judgment in your mind.

This will set you up to think everyone else does this to you and your work. This will eventually manifest itself in a paralyzing behavior where you feel like you can’t get anything done or any projects finished because everyone is waiting to pounce on you. You know, just as you do to everyone else.

But it’s acceptable for you to that because you’re just more important than everyone else.

Focus only on today

Productivity tip #18 seems to be opposite my #16 productivity tip. It is to focus only on today.

Just when I said to focus on putting one foot in front of the other to get some stuff done, here I’m going to tell you to totally ignore the future and act reactively to everything.

Don’t worry about what you’ll be doing next month or next year, just worry about this exact moment and how you feel.

You want to mess around and not get work done, do that. Don’t worry about work or paying those bills, that’s thinking about the future and thinking about the future is not something productive people do.

We wait until we feel like working before getting started. It feels better at the moment and the way you feel later isn’t something er should be bothered with thinking about.

What's in it for me?

Productivity tip #17 is to focus on what you can get out of any given situation. Don’t worry about the other party.

In fact, if someone else can benefit from something, that’s actually a bad thing and you should only do stuff when it benefits you and only you.

You don’t believe you get better by building the biggest building in town. You think you get better by cutting down any towers bigger than you now.

All the benefit is for you and its practically your duty to ensure nobody around you benefits at all.

Focus on the future and not today

My 16th productivity tip is to never get started if you aren’t 100% sure you will be doing that thing for several years.

You can never begin something and expect that you can stop.

Be so focused on where you will be personally or where your business could be in five years that you become paralyzed with the anxiety of ever starting anything.

After all, what good is it to just do something once and never be sure you can do it again?

Like I said about risk-taking, better it is to just never get started and wallow in a cesspool of self-loathing and misery than start something you may not be able to complete or even do for a long period of time.

There is also a side effect of looking to the future. You can be sure that your life will pass you by. Why focus on being content with what you do have when you can be constantly miserable about what you don’t have but want badly.

Compare yourself to your peers

Productivity tip #15 is a bit of an overall life hack. Insist on comparing yourself to your peers and those whom you wish to be like.

Has someone bought something you really wanted and shared it on social media? Maybe they post photos of the perfect life or vacation? Maybe the stuff they post online gets more likes or views than you?

Or maybe that artist or photographer is just way better than you and you can’t stop comparing yourself to them.

This is a very good thing because it will cause you to contemplate giving up altogether. Surely you can’t be as good as them ever.

Instead of focusing on showing up and chopping wood and being productive and doing your best and being content with that, you through all the good you do away and find the most negative and self-destructive angle possible.

You can now hinder your progress and ensure you feel terrible at all times. Productivity off the charts!

Avoid risk

My 14th productivity tip is: Avoid risk!

Some would say that the biggest risk is to take no risk at all, but I say, why risk anything when you can rest on your laurels?

Taking risks means that you may improve and learn something new, but you could also fail and we must never be seen to fail.

Better to sabotage an attempt before you even give it a try.

Stare at screens and screens and screens

Shuttling through our tips for productivity, we have come to tip #13 which is to stare at screens for as many hours a day as you can.

Don’t get up, don’t stretch, don’t do anything that could get the blood flowing.

Don’t give your eyes a rest or consider the damage that could be happening to your eyeballs absorbing all that light and energy and color coming off your wall of screens.

Not only should you be staring at screens, but you should spend your time “doom-scrolling” through your favorite social media network. Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? pick your choice and waste all the time you can.

This will ensure you feel like a complete waste as well as completely sapped of energy at all times.

You will also develop an utter inability to work without “background” noise and you will have an insatiable craving for dopamine stimulation. This will make sure you’re distracted constantly. Very helpful indeed.

Virtual signal and be a “slacktivist”

Productivity tip #12 is: talk instead of do.

Because you don’t actually do anything substantive to help those for whom you suppose yourself to be fighting, you must reassure yourself by posting whatever the popular trend is online.

Don’t even think about getting out into the streets or spending your money to further causes you believe in, instead, fire off a status or two on facebook, post an Instagram story, or dunk on some fools via twitter.

It’s not about affecting change, it’s really just about how you look int the eyes of others.

Better to win than be right

Moving through my productivity tips we arrive at #11 which is to spend your time in fruitless arguments either online or in your office/studio.

See, it’s not about actually being right or having better ideas for your work, all that matters is that you win the argument.

When you’re focused on winning the argument you will be extra ruthless and thoughtless. This will leave you feeling depressed about how cruel you were and the person on whom you directed your tirade will probably also not feel so great.

To be angry or regretful about your behavior on or offline is a key to productivity.

Doubt is good, confidence is bad

Rule #10 in my list of productivity tips is: Always doubt yourself. Especially when you do try something new, be fearful, and doubt your ability to follow through.

Find what can go wrong and be sure that is what will happen.

After all, if you don’t hold yourself back, who will?

Be always negative

Rule #9 in our continued list of productivity tips is:

Criticize yourself no matter what. Also, make sure that your first thought of others is silent criticism. This will ensure that you will be defensive about anything you do or create because your reaction to all criticism will be that everyone is attacking you, just like your inner dialogue is always attacking others.

Pessimism is easier (remember everyone else is to blame so woe is you!) so I always choose that instead of optimism. It helps me be more productive because angry energy is better than happy energy.

It’s never your fault

Rule #8 in my productivity list is: avoid responsibility.

If something goes wrong, blame anything and anyone you can. You shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility, that’s for other people to do.

Avoiding responsibility will not only make the people around you respect you more, but it will also allow you to ensure your ego is undisturbed.

Blame the world and victimize yourself. This is the way to better productivity.

No holding back

Taking a break from my list of sarcastic productivity hacks, I wanted to write about holding back.

We hold back to save energy thinking that we’ll use it later. It is indeed a fine line between blowing all our energy on a single task and pacing ourselves, but we’ve got to be honest with ourselves when we’re holding back because we don’t feel like giving it everything we’ve got.

No holding back. The less you hold back, the sooner you’ll build endurance and resilience and you won’t be tempted to hold back as much.

So the new rule is no holding back. Go for it and trust that you will recover and be able to continue and complete the day’s work.

Avoid all human interaction

Rule #7 in my best of productivity playlist is:

Stay away from people. In fact, playing off rule #2 about staying inside, try to keep sunlight away from you at all costs.

Go outside often means spending time with friends. This is obviously a bad thing because any time not spent in the dark isolation of your room is wasted time. Right?

Stay in front of your screen always and consume instead of creating. Chase dopamine hits. Scroll Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, tik tok, or whatever current social media platform is enticing you to doom-scroll.

Moderation? What’s that? Don’t worry about moderation or self-control. You only have to start working when you want to or when you “feel” motivated. That way you can go days on end without doing anything but consuming media online.

Don’t be specific or realistic

Details are overrated and having a certain vagueness surrounding your goals makes them more fun. After all, who wants to be bothered with those annoying details?

Speaking of goals, make sure you make them incredibly unrealistic. Why shoot for getting your first 10 clients when you can focus on your first million clients instead?

Keep your unrealistic goals and the vague plan on how to actually execute stashed away in the back of your mind where you can obsess over them while simultaneously doing nothing of worth to achieve them.

Confuse your brain

Moving along to the fifth rule for ultimate productivity we have:

Confuse your brain as much as possible. Do all of your work, sleeping, and entertainment in the same area.

This way your brain will never enter into a “work mode” where you can be ultra-productive. After all, it’s better to have continual distractions of Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, or the news while you are working.

As a side effect, even when you’re not distracted, you’ll be spending time looking to be distracted and probably get up and go eat or take a nap instead.

This is the way to better productivity. Of that I am sure.