I started today with a simple goal:
update the hero image on a client’s website. But first…
- I needed the latest brand assets.
- As I signed into Google drive, my PC had to update.
- While I waited on a restart, I noticed the PC shelf was about to fall off.
- To fix the shelf I needed a screwdriver.
- I’d left my toolbox in the car.
- Damn, the car battery is dead. But luckily, I know the farmer next door has charger cables.
- I grabbed the charger cables, but the farmer’s animals had chewed through them.
- “Tell you what,” he says, “I’ll jump start you if you finish shaving this yak for me.”
Next thing I know: I’m in a field, shaving a yak, I can’t remember how I got there, wondering why the homepage still says “Coming Soon.”
This is called “yak shaving“:
you start one task, which leads to another,
and before you know it the day is over and
you haven’t finished any of your tasks.
The Great Productivity Lie
This pattern is one of the biggest barriers to you realizing your full potential.
There’s this idea that if you can be productive enough, you’ll finish everything on your todo list.
The issue? Tasks lead to more tasks.
So the more things you do, the more you have to do.
And the faster you do them, the longer your to-do list gets.
It’s a vicious cycle:
🔄 Increased productivity leads to more things to do
🔄 Which requires more productivity
🔄 Which leads to more things to do!
It’s a loop that leads straight to burnout.
What’s worse is that many productivity apps actually encourage this cycle.
You’ve been sold a fantasy.
A beautiful, organized, color-coded fantasy where you tick off tasks like a machine and feel amazing about yourself.
This week on Life by Design, I’ll be sharing why your productivity apps might be making you less productive, and how to recognize when you’re actually making progress
(It’s hard to spot as it never feels how you think it should).
The waterfall of distraction
This waterfall of distraction can happen to your time too.
It happened to me, and the weird thing I was even aware of it happening.
I’d spend each day yak shaving instead of working on my most important tasks, and somehow, every day the timer reset and I repeated the pattern.
- First days,
- then weeks,
- then months,
- then years
Eventually I realised I had a problem and turn to productivity hacks and gurus for help.
But then I discovered there are two types of productivity:
One of these is very attractive, but will lead you astray downs path that leads straight to burnout,
The other is dark, scary even, but will help you carve out the life you want from the chaos.
How to know you’re fooling yourself:
🎂 Fake productivity feels good
🍎 True productivity is uncomfortable
The first character in this story?
Fake productivity is a dopamine trap
First, know this:
Productivity apps are designed to make you feel good, not to make you productive.
I absolutely love Clickup, in fact I built my second brain on Clickup.
But nevertheless productivity apps is SAAS, and they have competition.
Like any app, they compete for your attention.
They are designed to be addictive and to keep you glued to your platform ticking off tasks
Whether they are important or not.
THIS is the great lie about productivity…
We sit ticking off lots of menial tasks quickly.
It feels great:
Woosh, another email!
Just look at all those ticks on our to-do list.
Task marked complete, a satisfying click, and a confetti animation!
and we kid ourselves we are being productive.
The paradox of productivity
It feels like we’re getting shit done,
but really we’re going nowhere.
We’re sacrificing momentum for satisfaction.
It’s FAKE productivity.
Productive means producing
What are you producing?
If you follow traditional productivity tools,
The only thing you’ll be producing is more busiwork for yourself:
This form of traditional productivity permeates almost every part of our culture and focuses on doing more stuff in less time
There’s this idea that if you can be productive enough you’ll finish everything on your todo list.
The issue with this is that tasks lead to more tasks.
So the more things you do, the more you have to do
and the faster you do them, the longer your to-do list gets.
So increase productivity leads to more things to do ↙️
which requires more productivity ↙️
Which leads to more things to do!
🤦♂️
Productivity apps help you with HOW to complete tasks,
Never have you stopped to ask WHY or WHAT tasks to complete.
Now let’s meet the alter ego.
True productivity feels Uncomfortable
TRUE productivity looks and feels like the exact opposite of productivity.
It’s messy,
it’s difficult,
it’s stressful,
it’s inconclusive.
This is why it’s so hard to recognise,
And why most of us avoid true productivity.
REAL productivity is:
messy handwritten notes
unanswered emails,
Lingering lists of ignored tasks,
Launching before your ready,
unsatisfying open mental loops…
But when we sacrifice feeling good,
to sit down to actually do the work,
we produce results that move the needle.
If you’ve read 4000 weeks, then you know already:
The only TRUE productivity method is working less.
We must be more selective about what you do
Fake Productivity vs True Productivity
So why the most productive people appear disorganized from the outside?
The most productive people I know have messy desks, unfinished tasks, and ignored emails.
Well, we all have the same amount of time in the day,
Successful people seem to have powerful daily routines that make more of the time they have.
Not because they’re faster or smarter or have better apps.
But because they’re ruthless about what they say NO to.
Work-life Balance isn’t possible.
Which ironically means letting lots of other things slide.
To be TRUE producers, we must learn to tell the difference between valuable tasks and menial tasks.
True Productivity is not getting more done,
It’s getting the right things done,
and working on them a little bit every day using a deep work habit.
Think about your eyes, you can focus on multiple things at once.
You have to STOP focussing on other things, and learn to intentionally focus on your chosen target.
Being a solopreneur often feels like having 127 things to do every day, and only being able to choose 1 🤣
So doing less tasks is the only way to make more with the time you do have .
But how do we choose?
The lion and the antelope parable
There’s a parable that perfectly captures this:
A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse.
But the energy required to hunt mice exceeds the caloric value of the mouse itself.
A lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death.
A lion can’t live on field mice.
A lion needs antelope.
So ask yourself at the end of the day:
“Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?”
Most of us spend our days chasing mice – ticking off small tasks that feel good but don’t move us forward.
True productivity means hunting antelope – tackling the big, scary, messy tasks that actually change your life and business.
Let’s zoom out to take a macro view of your life.
Back to first principles of thought:
Before you can decide what to focus on, you have to decide what to say no to,
So you have more time to work on the tasks that actually move you forwards, ie “produce” The results you want
Before you can do that,
You have to figure out the results you want to achieve.
Then break grand goals into daily projects you can work into your schedule and repeat everyday.
The links above will give you the deep dive, but here’s the short version:
How to actually be productive
- Figure out where you should be spending your time
- ➡️ work on only tasks that move you in that direction
- ➡️ ignore other tasks
- ➡️ work on your steps daily
- = real productivity
Simple doesn’t mean easy.
You have to figure out what the big picture is first.
Distraction is a constant battle, and it sneaks up, you won’t even notice when you’ve veered off track.
There’s a consistency system for solopreneurs that I use every quarter to make sure I’m working in the right direction.
