Thursday 20th May 2021

I’ve come to the conclusion recently that you can’t be productive every day.

I used to be of the mindset of being productive every minute of every day, and then being pissed at myself when I wasn’t.  I’ve built fantastic systems over the years but I’ve come to realise they are a tool not a necessity.

For example, over the last month or so, when I’ve been working on the outlines, I’ve been so singularly focused on those that my productivity systems went by the wayside.  It’s only since the outlines were sent off that I’ve come back to my systems and made improvements.

But I’ve long realised that those systems are there to aid me.  Ironically, if I’m busy and I have no time for them, then that’s fine.  They are there for when I’m overloaded and don’t know which way to turn.  I’ve got it so they are easy to maintain, and more importantly, easy to pick back up.

Last year, I put a lot of work into review.  All my systems had been forward facing and using ToDoist I was doing a great job of being productive on short term goals.  On the long term stuff, I realised I was often so focused on what I was doing it was impossible for me to see the bigger picture.

As a result, a year ago, I started doing goals and weekly reviews.  I’m still growing this but the idea is that from the perspective of a year, a month, a week, and now even a day, I can drill down my bigger goals.  Most importantly, I can also filter back up, taking my accomplishments for the day, into accomplishments for the week, for the month and for the year.  At each point there’s a review that allows me to course correct.

Originally, I took someone else’s template and worked with that, modifying it over the last year.  I’m almost at the stage where I want to rebuild it from the ground up, although if I do that it’ll be part of a bigger piece of work I want to do on writer productivity.

This week, I added a day tracker into it.  The idea is to take the day and break it into hours.  Then I fill in each hour with what I’ve been doing.  I can then take this at the end of the week to build my weekly review.

But yesterday was a busy day.  I had to help someone get ready for a vaccine appointment that meant getting up early, which then left me tired and caused me to sleep a few hours.  I built a new database for tracking submissions that will hook into my writing projects database.  And I did get some writing on The Accursed done but it wasn’t a productive day by any means.

But that’s OK.  I’ve realised that there were valid reasons and there’s always going to be unproductive days.  I can’t be productive all the time.

The important thing is that through the use of these tools,  not only am I able to spot these days, I can see if it’s more than a blip and course correct if needed.

There’s still much work to do but the goal is probably never going to be 100% productivity.  It’s about not letting those days derail you for any longer than possible.

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