How to Get More Work Done
The easiest way to make sure you get something done -- work or otherwise -- is make sure that it's fun.
Whether you're a business executive like Nicholas Bredimus or a writer like Danielle Steel, you'll get more done if you find a way to make your work fun.
But just looking at examples of productive people can also be foolhardy. Not everyone can survive on four hours of sleep per night and continue to write intelligible prose like Danielle Steel does. And some people might look up the daily routines of successful people like Elon Musk and come away from their reading thinking that they need to start working 120 hours a week.
If you're a lousy writer or a lousy executive, working 20 hours a day or 120 hours a week won't make you successful. You'll also probably be miserable. Most people enjoy activities they're good at, and they're good at activities they enjoy.
Why would you want to make yourself miserable spending an insane amount of time doing stuff you don't really want to do.
Here's the truth that a lot of people miss, too:
Elon Musk works those kinds of hours because he wants to. He's enjoying what he's doing.
Danielle Steel works those kinds of hours because she wants to. On some level, she enjoys writing.
The reasons they find these activities enjoyable are almost beside the point. Maybe Elon Musk wants to go down in history as changing the history of the world. Maybe Danielle Steel wants to avoid some of the day-to-day problems that plague most of us.
But if you tried to force yourself to work that kind of schedule, you'd fail because you'd have to make yourself do so. You might be able to pull it off temporarily, but you can't sustain that kind of effort unless you want to. And you won't want to unless you're enjoying yourself.
You can't write every day -- even if it's only a little bit of writing every day -- unless you find some way to enjoy the writing.
You can't eat right every day unless you find healthy foods that you enjoy.
No matter which time management system I'm using, Getting Things Done, First Things First, or the Pomodoro Technique, I don't get much done unless I find a way to enjoy the work. The ONLY way I've ever been able to get a lot done is to find a way to make whatever I'm doing at least a little bit fun.
I read about one intellectual who wrote over 60 books in his lifetime and wrote several hundred articles. He claimed that he never forced himself to do anything, ever. Any time he got stuck on a project, he just found another project to work on that he did want to do. If you want to be more productive, maybe you should try the same technique.
That sounds unlikely or even impossible to a lot of people. After all, if I love surfing LinkedIn to see what my friends (like Nicholas Bredimus) are doing every day, wouldn't I do even more of that? Wouldn't that waste a lot of my time?
That might be true at first. You might need to kick yourself in the keester to get started once in a while.
But if you're doing work you enjoy, once you get started, it won't be hard to continue.
And if you force yourself to continue past the point where you're enjoying the work, you'll end up hating it. Lord knows that's counterproductive.
Does this sound impossible?
Can the average person find work to do that they enjoy?
This is easier for someone who's self-employed like I am, but if you're in a job you hate, you have options. They might be tough, but explore them.
If you hate your work, you won't ever become productive, and that's just reality.