The real secret to my Productivity. And no, it wasn’t time blocking.
Read time: 9 minutes
I took over a month off work at the end of last year.
I didn’t open my laptop for 45 days.
And then January 6th rolled around and I sat down, ready to work.
I lasted two minutes.
The rest of the day? A blur of distractions - my apartment was spotless, my laundry was done and I had replied to all my WhatsApp messages.
But my work? No progress.
And yes, I used all the productivity hacks - time blocking, getting enough sleep, pomodoro timer, I tried them all.
Nothing was working. I couldn’t focus, I had no motivation, and couldn’t stick with a task for more than 10 minutes.
Fast forward three weeks, and here I am, writing this newsletter at 6:12 a.m on a Tuesday, after one of my most productive weeks in months.
I’ll tell you what changed and how I did it.
The Four Steps I Took to Get Back on Track
1. Get clarity. Motivation isn’t your problem, a lack of clarity is
2. Focus on what you can control. Your inputs are more important than outcomes
3. Kill bad habits. Why you MUST remove distractions
4. Harness the power of dopamine. Training your brain to enjoy the work
Step 1: Get Clarity
“People think they lack motivation, when what they really lack is clarity” - James Clear
For a week, I watched videos of people sharing their New Year goals, hoping to find the motivational spark I needed.
But every time I sat down to work, I felt paralyzed and my brain felt foggy. I’d push myself to start, feel overwhelmed, and eventually give up.
I thought the problem was my lack of motivation.
In reality it was something else.
After watching this video of James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, I realized my problem - I didn’t have a plan:
I didn’t know what I needed to do
why I needed to do it
how it fit into the bigger picture
To create this plan, I needed to get clarity on my goals.
I started by setting my yearly goals. Well, trying to. This quickly felt overwhelming because I couldn’t yet think that far into the future. So instead:
1. I brainstormed everything I wanted to achieve for the quarter as it felt more manageable
2. I circled the goals and projects that mattered most to me
3. I then broke them down into monthly and weekly tasks.
Suddenly, I had clarity and a roadmap based on my bigger picture.
Two of my goals:
- Post a newsletter every week, no matter who reads it
- Cook one new recipe weekly and document it.
The big lesson here? Clarity comes before motivation.
When you’re stuck, forcing yourself to push through can leave you feeling worse like it did with me.
Instead, do the opposite.
Step back and reflect
Get clear on what you want to achieve
Break these goals down into smaller more manageable tasks.
Step 2: Focus on what you can control
Last year, I lost motivation after failing to achieve one of my biggest goals.
I had poured so much effort into it, and when things didn’t work out, I felt like a failure. The disappointment drained my energy and made it hard to keep trying.
I then came across this video from the Queen, Leila Hormozi, that reminded me of this powerful mindset shift:
Focus on the inputs. The outcomes will follow.
Why?
Because you can control you inputs, but not your outcomes.
Let’s define outcomes and inputs:
Outcomes: are the results you’re hoping for:
getting 10,000 newsletter subscribers
becoming a better designer
getting a new design job
Inputs: the things you do to progress towards the outcomes:
writing for 2 hours a day
applying a new design framework each month
sending out 10 job applications a week
So now, instead of obsessing over my subscriber count every morning and feeling deflated if it didn’t change, I now track whether I wrote for 2 hours, and feel a sense of achievement if I did.
This action is within my control.
This will help me to stay consistent and motivated. And the results and outcome of increasing my subscribers will take care of itself.
Of course, if my inputs aren’t driving the desired outcomes, I review and reflect. I do this by asking:
What’s working?
What isn’t?
What can I change or do differently?
3. Kill bad habits
During my time off work, I purchased a new TV for my apartment which I had binged many Christmas movies on over the festive period.
I would then work in the living room, and everytime I got bored with a task or hit a difficult problem, I’d convince myself to take a ‘productive break’. I would watch a ‘productivity’ video in that ‘productive break’, thinking it would help me to get back on task. The irony.
I couldn’t break this habit.
It was only when I listened to a podcast that I realised I had created an unproductive habit loop where my TV had become a cue for procrastination. Whenever I saw it, I was triggered to open YouTube.
If you’re not familiar with habit loops, here’s a quick breakdown:
Cue: The trigger that prompts an action (seeing my tv)
Routine: The action or behavior (watching YouTube videos)
Reward: The outcome that reinforces the habit (feeling like I'm being productive)
To break this bad habit I needed to remove the cue. Not prepared to get rid of my tv, I instead changed my environment. So I set up my laptop at a coffee shop. It made the world of a difference!
This shift worked because I removed the cue (the TV) that triggered my habit (watching YouTube).
I won’t dive deeper into habits here, but if you’re interested, I highly recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. It was life-changing for me, it took me from being unmotivated and lazy to building consistent, productive habits.
This is also a pretty good video to watch about this topic. It’s basically Nir Eyal summarising his new book Indistractable. It’s all about avoiding distractions.
Ask yourself:
Are there any behaviours I have that are getting in the way of me being productive?
Do these behaviours have a trigger that I can remove?
4. Harness the power of dopamine
Dopamine is a hormone that is released in your brain when you do something enjoyable.
It creates a feeling of pleasure.
This makes you want to repeat the behaviour that caused it.
It’s basically your brains way of saying “That felt good, let’s do it again!”
I wanted to use this to my advantage - By rewarding myself every time I made progress, I could create a positive feedback loop.
I experimented with different rewards to create the dopamine hit but it didn’t work. For example, the reward of Deliveroo at the end of the day if I completed all my tasks. However the reward was too far away.
I needed smaller, immediate wins. So I tried the following:
1. A coffee break after two hours of deep work.
2. Adding my finished tasks to a Completed Tasks list.
I know, is sounds trivial. But trust me, it feels good and works!
In 10 minutes when my pomorodo timer goes off, I’ll be writing “30 minutes of writing” to my Completed Tasks list and it’s going to feel like a mini celebration. Even the simple sound of the timer going off gives me a dopamine hit.
Try it for yourself
Pick a small, simple action as a reward tied to the task you’re doing.
Test it for a few days and see if it makes your task of working feel more rewarding and enjoyable.
Here are some other rewards I’ve experimented with:
Adding completed tasks to a post it note and adding it to the wall.
Posting a picture of the completed task on social media.
Moving the task on my Kanban board to the completed section
Using stickers to mark completed tasks in my planner or journal.
Take a brief moment to read a page of a book.
Making a cup of tea
Remember, they don’t need to be big or flashy rewards.
I also recommend reading about dopamine and the brain to understand how chemicals affect our brain and our actions.
It’s mind blowing and will completely change the way you work. I wish I could write more about it but this newsletter is already longer than my average.
My biggest learning…
The biggest learning for me was that the barriers I had were not external - they were in internal.
It was my mindset.
We often think we need a new setting or a better project to feel inspired. But in reality, the problem is usually deeper: fear of failure, lack of clarity, self-doubt or insecurity.
No number of to-do lists or a well organised calendar can fix that.
That’s why techniques such as time blocking and using pomodoro techniques didn’t work for me at the start.
I had mental blocks that were holding me back.
I hope the lessons here will help you with any mental blocks you have.
P.S.
Here's all the resources I’ve mentioned throughout:
Books:
YouTube Videos:
Leila Hormozi talking about inputs
