Post Pandemic Productivity – The Climb #944

Thursday 23rd September 2021

This is proving too much of a lazy week.

The idea behind this week was to focus on some non-writing projects and see if I continued to naturally turn out the words.

I don’t know why – possibly the pandemic or other things – but I’m not very good at automated habits anymore. If I have a structure and a system then, yes, things get done, but without it, everything falls apart.

I’m also wondering if I try to do too much. It feels like my output, writing or otherwise, has plummeted since the pandemic. I keep stats on writing, and looking at them, I’m already at over 500,000 words this year. That’s both not bad, but at the same time, it’s not setting any records.

So I’m in this strange quasi-quandry where I can see a lot of things are getting done but I’m left wondering whether I should be doing more, or if I just have unrealistic expectations of myself.

But one thing is sure. I need a system.

Without it, everything starts to fall apart.

Productivity can become very toxic when it moves into grind culture. It’s easy to push yourself to exhaustion, so I try and look at it more from a point of inquisition. I want to know what my triggers are. I want to know what works for me.

I do think working from home has made more people efficient. It’s not he case for everyone, but I cannot work with others’ noise. It’s a distraction. But at the same time, I think this pandemic has created a major mental health issue that we’ve not even fully discovered yet. I’m quite happy being on my own. I had a support bubble from day one and compared to others I had lockdown very, very easy.

And yet, I’ve noticed very marked differences in my productivity. I have to approach things differently (which if I didn’t monitor it as much, I would not have noticed). I feel my brain has been rewired and I’ve had to put effort into adjusting. I used to be able to time block and task batch. That’s now not so easy. The primary tasks are getting done, but if this week was evidence of anything, it’s that secondary tasks are just being pushed back constantly.

Mark my words, in years to come we’ll come to understand the level of trauma the pandemic caused. I think it’s rewired my brain to some degree and it’s an often frustrating exercise to rediscover how my brain works.