Productivity don’ts from someone who has failed at them all.

There’s a very old parlour game where the challenge is NOT to think of a white bear for a minute.

Go on, try…

You can see him now, right. Looking at you from his iceberg.

The more you try not to think about something, the more it takes over.

I’ve come to see productivity in the same way. When you focus too hard on how to get more done, your attention goes to the process, rather than doing the things.

Once upon a time, I had endless energy and was one of those people who woke early and threw myself into the whirl of doing things and didn’t stop until midnight. I dealt with everything, whether it was mine or not. I got drawn into pointless debates (once a furious row with a boss, while I was on holiday, over the best person to send to a client meeting)…took on other people’s messes, and felt bizarrely capable and productive.

After having children, my capacity (and sleep) dropped but my working patterns didn’t change much. Which meant I spent a few years trudging through chaos.

After then, I spent time trying to figure out how to get the most useful things done in the least amount of time.

It took me a while to realise that busying myself with prioritised lists, tomato timers, colour-coded time boxes and perfect planners (Papier before the recent updates), they became the white bear.

Too much thinking about productivity gets in the way of getting things done.

The vlog today is a compressed version of my LinkedIn live with Helen at Amazing If about what I’ve learnt since.

TLDR my ‘don’t do’ list is long. What’s on yours?

Christine