Days I want to dominate the world with my productivity? Every day.
Days I actually dominate the world with my productivity? Maybe 1-2 days a week.
What happens on the rest of those days?
Minimum Viable Productivity.
What is minimum viable productivity? I don’t know I just made it up this morning so I’m kinda going with the flow, but what it feels like to me is when I do just enough during that day to feel optimistic about going into the next day. Pretty much every day I wake up with the intention to get a lot done, but come 11pm I feel like I have just scratched the surface. Some days start better than others, but after lunchtime productivity trails off. Other days I have bad starts but find a way to regain the mojo later in the day to feel good about the things I got done.
So how do you prevent MVP days from happening?
1. Don’t try to take on the world - Just like our eyes are too big for our stomachs, our brains can be too ambitious for what we can actually accomplish during the day. Pick one thing you NEED to get done, then once you accomplish that, pick a couple more things off the list.
2. Don’t add extra things to your to-do list - Say you start the day with three things you want to get done, but by the time noon rolls around you have found a way to add five more things to your to-do list today. If it’s not a priority for the day, then default to saying no.
3. Don’t beat yourself up for a bad day - Yesterday I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. I took too long to send emails that would have taken five minutes to send, and I just kinda mailed it in overall. So while I wasn’t too particularly happy with myself, I decided to attack Sunday. Here we are on Sunday and I have already went to the grocery store, made it to the office, and writing this blog post before noon.
4. Take the initial step - You’ll be amazed at how easy getting things done can be, even with the things you don’t want to do. You just have to start! Yeah when you wake up you probably won’t want to get out of bed, but once you do you feel fine! You don’t want to send those emails? Start by focusing on one, then before you know it you have cleaned your email inbox. Don’t focus on the whole task, focus on the start.
These are things I am going to focus on this week, especially since it is a week where I don’t have a lot of free time to get work done. Should be fun.
