The Stages of Productivity [Are You Actually Being Productive?]

Being productive can often be extremely difficult and daunting, especially day in and day out when you are trying to do it consistently. Personally, I know that I need to program my mind into having a productive day each morning via prayer and affirmations. This also includes planning out my day on a to-do list to ensure that I get my most important tasks done. This made me curious as to why productivity can be so difficult. It also had me think back to the past me and wonder if I was more or less productive in earlier years?

Less. Much less.

Looking back at myself as a kid and teenager I was not productive at all. If anything, I was lazy! As I matured, I did strive to become more productive, but I still wasn’t productive. Instead, I would do what is called productive procrastination.

Productive procrastination is when you keep yourself busy with unimportant tasks rather than working on activities that have the most value. We often do this because working on our most valuable and important tasks can be daunting.

However, this fun little thought experiment got me curious to examine different stages of productivity that we go through in life, why that is, and how to evolve to the next stage if you are stuck in rut.

The different stages of productivity are:

1. Laziness
2. Productive Procrastination
3. Actual Productivity

Laziness

Humans are inherently lazy. This might be a tough pill to swallow for some of you. For others, you may be feeling lazy and you are happy to know that you are not alone. As humans, we often like to take the path of least resistance. So, doing nothing is a whole of a lot easier than doing something. It is overcoming this feeling that is the challenging part.

The way our society operates also makes us lazy. Forget all of the technology and new services of the 21^st century that make it possible for us to get everything we ever wanted without getting off the couch. That’s not even what I’m referring to, but that definitely adds to the laziness. Think back to the first time in your life you were really made to do something productive. For most of us, our first time doing productive activities are usually in school. And I am willing to bet you didn’t really enjoy school as a child! Most kids don’t. This makes us associate doing work with a negative perception early on. Since we are forced to do it, we resent it.

Luckily, over time most of us will grow out of this laziness phase. We might still go through moments where we feel lazy, but overall we will become contributing members of society. If you do feel lazy, try to find something that you enjoy doing and put your time and effort into that. It doesn’t need to be something that will make you rich, just something that will make you happy.

Productive Procrastination

As we get older and more mature, we typically want to become more productive. I think there are many reasons for this shift in mindset:

1. Out of necessity. We have a lot going on with work, college, internships, or life in general that we have to start being productive in order to get all our major tasks done.
2. We feel bad. Not being productive and sitting around on the couch all day makes us feel lousy. This feeling can sometimes be the kick in the butt we need to start doing more.
3. We discover self-improvement. We strive to become a better version of ourselves every day, and we know we need to be productive and hardworking in order to make this happen.

However, actually being productive takes a lot of time and effort. Instead, we will often fall into this path of thinking we are being productive – when we really are not.

We will do a bunch of tasks that may or may not be necessary, to avoid doing the important tasks that will have the greatest impact on our life. For example, you might decide to clean the shed to procrastinate from writing the book you have always wanted to write and finally told yourself you would do. You may need to clean the shed, maybe it has even been something you wanted to do for months, but it is probably not an urgent task that needs to be done right now. You only want to do it now because the real task that you want to do is too overwhelming.

The hardest part of overcoming this stage of productivity is realizing you are in it. If you feel like you are busy every day and are crossing things off of your to-do list, that’s a great start. However, take the time to step back and analyze what it is you are working on. Are they tasks that will help you get to your ultimate goal? Are they progressing your life forward in a positive way? Or are they busy work tasks that you are doing to feel productive and fill a void but aren’t positively impacting your life in any way? Once you answer these questions, you will know if you are productively procrastinating or actually productive.

Actual Productivity

When you are actually productive, two things will happen:

1. You will know it. You will be able to tell when you are actually being productive, and it won’t just be from the hours you put in. The crazy thing about actual productivity is you may even end up working fewer hours! Needing to be “on” 24/7 in order to be productive is a myth. We can go through productive spurts where we set aside an allocated period of time, maybe an hour, and drown in our work. By blocking out all distractions for that one-hour slot, you will likely be more productive than a 4-5 hour time period where you are scrolling through Instagram every 20 minutes.
   
   
2. You will feel it. The tasks you are doing will be so meaningful to you that you will feel awesome when accomplishing them. Let me ask you – how amazing do you feel after you vacuum your house or clean your shed? Maybe a little. Maybe not at all. But how amazing will you feel if you finally sat down and wrote that book? Or you finally take the steps toward starting that business idea that you’ve had for years? I guarantee it will feel a whole lot better than cleaning or any other simple, busy work task you do to fill up your day. And it will feel infinitely better than being lazy and getting nothing at all done.

If you do feel like you are stuck in the laziness cycle or the productive procrastination cycle, that’s totally fine. We all go through these phases. I even believe it is necessary to go through them in order to reach your full productivity potential. So if you currently aren’t as productive as you would like to be, don’t let this get you discouraged. Take the time to analyze yourself, your life, and what you hold meaningful to you. Then change up your to-do list and/or schedule to prioritize the most meaningful things in your life and start working on those! It might be daunting and challenging, but in the long run, you will be so thankful you did it and you will feel tremendously better!

Best,

Eric