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How to have a Productive Day

If you’re like me, staying focused is a constant battle. Remembering what you actually need to do is half of that battle. I loved writing to-do lists, but it did not love me back. I would write my tasks in a notebook only to forget about them until the end of the day or even weeks ahead.

So... what changed? Why the heck am I even writing this blog?

It's hard to believe but I have finally found a system that works for me. No more trying to fit me into the mold of someone who thrives with Pomodoro timers. No more trying to squeeze my hours dry with time-blocking only to give up halfway through the day.

(Note: I am not saying these tools aren't effective for others. I am saying they didn’t work for me. And if you’re here, chances are– these tools didn’t work for you either.)

Three (weird) things you can do to have a productive day:

1) Find a way to process your emotions.

You weren’t expecting that one, huh? Why the heck are we talking about emotions when we're struggling to finish work? Won’t this just be another add-on to your already gargantuan to-do list?

Well, the thing is, you’re a human-- not a robot.

You have emotions. Procrastination is an emotion. You’re not doing what you want to do because you can’t stand feeling bored while doing it. Or maybe you’re actually afraid of failure. There are a lot of possible reasons but you get my point. 

Why is it so difficult for you to stay productive? Why do you find it hard to finish what you start? Are you afraid that whatever you make in reality will never look like the fantasy version of it in your head?

That’s what it was like for me. It was difficult for me to finish anything because halfway through a project, I realized whatever I was imagining in my head looked way better than what I was actually putting into reality.

You don’t have to spend hours digging up your inner childhood trauma. Set aside 10 minutes of your day and reflect on why you’re feeling so much resistance to doing something. When you find and accept the reason for your procrastination, it will be much easier for you to find ways to deal with it.

Let me give you a personal example.

I had a LOT of resistance writing this post because I was afraid of hurting my ego when I finished my first draft and it's bad. This is a persistent one that I bet a lot of people struggle with on a daily basis.

How did I work with this emotion?

Over the years, I have compiled a list of people I admire. I follow their creative process- especially when they are struggling. This slowly convinced my mind that cranking out garbage something not ideal the first time is just part of the process.

Another way I work with this emotion is by utilizing my competitiveness (this is why it's also important to understand your tendencies so you can manipulate yourself essentially).

I use a bot called Sprinto in Discord. This tool is specifically for writers or anyone who needs to get some writing done. You work with a few people, set up a timer for all of you, and set the bot with the prompt /sprint. At the end of the timer, everyone who signed up during that sprint would be notified and you would write down how many words you wrote for that time.

As a competitive person, this bot worked GREAT for me. Instead of worrying if my words were put together perfectly, I am more focused on the amount of words I'm writing instead.

Of course, your process will be different from mine but it is important you are aware of yourself and your emotions so that you are able to understand which methods to apply to yourself and which ones to ignore.

2) Time yourself.

Especially if you’re someone who constantly loses track of time. Seriously, set up a stopwatch on your phone and find out how long it takes for you to finish tasks.

According to Dr. K, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, people who have time blindness tend to have broken internal clocks (if you don't have time blindness feel free to skip this part). It’s difficult for us to estimate how long things would actually take. So instead, you can rely on an external clock to help you have a better grasp of time (he does a way better job of explaining time blindness than I do!). 

Here’s how I would usually plan my day. I use Google Sheets to input the estimated time and the actual time for a task.

Putting all these details regularly can feel overwhelming at first but bear with me. I recommend you stick with this for a week and if it doesn’t work– you can toss it away.

Column A would be what's on your to-do, Column B the estimated time it takes to do that, Column C is the actual time, and Column D is where you put your reflection (here's where you would strategize how to make things work better next time OR where you would praise yourself for estimating well).

Row 18 is where I total the amount of estimated time and row 19 is where I count the actual hours I have left by hand. I'll tell you later why this is important.

I want to remind you that you don’t have to put everything you do in here right away– you can start by listing your most important tasks and timing those.

You already know the importance of Columns B and C. By estimating how long tasks take and then timing yourself with a stopwatch when you do that task, your brain can see the disparity between how long you think things take and how long they actually take.

This method helps me better than time blocking because it gives me the flexibility to do my tasks in the order that I’m feeling at any hour. 

Let's move on to the bottom rows, shall we?

Row 18 is where I would total my estimated time and determine the number of hours every task will take. Row 19 is where I will count by hand how many hours I have left in the day.

Comparing the two rows helps me understand the limits of my time in a day. I used to overestimate how many things I could do in a day, but this simple method grounds me back in reality.

I know a lot of you want to glaze over Column D, but please take at least a bit of time to think about the details you just put in. Timing yourself won't help as much if you're not doing the next step and thinking back on why what you're doing worked or not. This space is where you can strategize how to finish that task you procrastinated on for the next day.

Was it too big of a project? Break it down into hours.

You must see this reflection column with an experimenter’s eyes and use it as a tool to tweak things about your schedule. That way, you can have a higher chance of getting better results the next time and not beat yourself up for failing to do the task. If you find yourself spiraling in a negative pattern, I implore you to go back to tip 1.

3) Make things fun for you.

Just the act of filling the boxes one by one and timing yourself doing tasks can feel super tedious and boring to do. Trust me, I felt the same way. The first week I did this, I could feel mini migraines creeping up.

So I made it as fun for me as possible.

I color-coded my tasks by categories so they’re fun to look at. I use different emojis every week as bullet points because my brain loves to see variety.

I also have a template I use everyday (that I tweak every week) and I copy and paste and customize it to fit the current day. I also… listen to ASMR while doing all of this LOL. The ones that go on for 3 hours with barely any talking.

Hey, it worked for me. Perhaps they could work for you too.

My last and biggest tip to make things more fun-- this is not a sponsor but I wish it was– is to use the app called Finch.

It’s a gamified self-care app where you get a pet bird and you can dress them up or take them to adventures by doing the tasks you put in the app.

(behold my cute wee birb)

This might sound a bit crazy but after filling in my tasks in my spreadsheet, I would rewrite them here.

This app has a feature so you can set certain tasks to be done daily, weekly, or on certain days of the week. So if you use it enough times to figure out your routine, you don’t have to manually put things in every time.

My favorite feature on this app has to be the hatchable egg for gacha-infested minds like mine. Basically, you can collect a bunch of pets for your birb by hatching the eggs.

How do you hatch those eggs?

I’m glad you asked— by connecting them to one daily task. If you do that daily task 7 times (it doesn’t have to be on consecutive days), you hatch the egg!

I always connect mine to organizing tasks which helps me set up my day every day. This is the variety my brain craves on the regular. And somehow, it just…works.

I know my tips are a little weird, but I hope you are able to find at least one thing to try out for yourself! Even if they don’t work, be proud that you tried!

That’s the ultimate first step in being more productive. Just test things out for yourself. Not every method in the book would work for you. It took me more than a decade to find a system that worked for me. I hope that just as I stumbled upon my methods, you are able to find your own quirky way of staying productive, too.