No Productivity Hack Will Save You
What to do when completely overloaded with tasks.
This week has been tough.
Every day, I’d wake up and, instead of seeing my task-list get shorter, it’d be longer.
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
In such a situation, it’s so tempting to just want to give up. What’s the point of doing anything when it doesn’t make a dent?
And so we go out searching for answers.
Am I doing something wrong, you ask? What’s the secret?
You feel that there must be some productivity hack that you somehow missed.
And so, just like I did, you read all the productivity advice possible.
…
The truth is none are the secret you were looking for. None will defeat the task-list tyrant.
That’s because, as helpful as each of these techniques can be, they all offer a false promise.
You will never get to the end.
We just have too much information to deal with and we are finite beings.
We all get tired.
We all have our limited bandwidth. And we all get just 24 hours in a day.
Yet the tasks keep coming.
And so you end up feeling like I am now: stuck in a hole with just a spoon to dig myself out.
So what’s my solution? I don’t have one.
Work and work, and you’ll still be left with all the other stuff to get done. I guess that’s just life.
But I will say this:
Done is better than perfect.
Don’t agonize over every little detail. Doing something, even badly, is better than not doing it at all.
By doing something, you’re sending energy out into the world.
It becomes real, even if it isn’t pretty. (Just like this post!)
But don’t worry about pretty — focus on returning the ball across the net.
Focus on catching the juggling ball and throwing it back up into the air. The next one is coming down fast.
Then do the only thing you can do.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
You’ve got this.
ps. If you enjoyed reading this, you can support my writing here.
Your piece on embracing "done is better than perfect" resonates deeply. Recognizing that perfectionism often leads to procrastination and stress is enlightening. Focusing on completing tasks, even imperfectly, fosters progress and learning. This mindset shift encourages action and reduces unnecessary pressure. Your insights are a valuable reminder to prioritize productivity and well-being over unattainable perfection.
I concur entirely with what Anton says in the comment below. My dissertation advisor's helpful mantra of "progress, not perfection" is echoed in your post, Ben. An amusing aside is that at the opening of a presentation I gave last summer on the philoosphy of work, I literally threw a popular productivity planner on the ground as part of making a similar point!