10 Easy Productivity Tips: How to Get Shit Done When You Don’t Feel Like Doing Shit

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How do you beat laziness and become more productive when you REALLY don’t feel like doing shit?

 

 

I’m VERY familiar with the feeling of not wanting to do shit. Blame laziness, depression, procrastinator tendencies, overwhelm, apathy, or something else entirely.

 

 

Whatever it is, what often ends up happening is that I don’t do everything I need to do – or even a few of those things I needed to do – and I feel like shit because of it.

 

 

That is NOT the goal. Especially when the reason I’m struggling in the first place is because I’m feeling down and incapable to start with – feeling unproductive is a great way to spiral deeper down the hole.

 

 

With my experience in all of the areas listed above, I’ve picked up some tips over the years that have helped me get slightly better at getting shit done, even when I don’t feel like doing it. Here they are.

 

 

1. The 2 minute rule

 

 

If a task takes less than 2 minutes, just do it now. For example: Taking out the trash. Throwing the laundry into the dryer. Putting dishes from the drying rack into the cabinets. I am a queen of seeing something I need to do, and thinking I should just do it when I have *more* time to do it later. That’s a cute idea, but the reality is that the best time to get it done is right now when you do have 2 minutes, because 10 of those items throughout the day adds up to a longer chunk of your day, plus you have to remember all of the things that you were going to do from earlier in the day that you had put off, and it takes more time and effort – literally, takes more brain power – for you to jump from one task to another in rapid succession, versus jumping to one short task and then getting back to whatever else you were doing before you stopped to do that one thing.

 

 

2. The 5-4-3-2-1 Countdown

 

 

Sometimes you really don’t feel like doing something and you really have to drag yourself to it. You end up having to go through some really intense mental gymnastics to make yourself shift into motion, because all you really want to do is stay in bed, on the couch, in your car, or whatever. Sometimes this is laziness, where I’m comfortable and don’t want to shift into another feeling because I’m feeling good with where I’m at. But other times, this is because I’m so unmotivated that I can’t connect with my reason for even doing something as simple as getting up to go to the bathroom. (That’s a deeper issue, but I’ll comment on that closer to the end of this post.) I feel like this trick is better for lazy situations than unmotivated situations, because it doesn’t focus on the root cause as much as it works with honing your focus on an outcome, but try it either way.

 

 

When you don’t want to do something but you need to just do it, give yourself a countdown from 5, and when you reach 1 you have to get up and do the thing you need to do. So take a breath, give yourself a spacious “5… 4… 3… 2… 1…” and then get up and move. As Nike says, that’s when you gotta “Just do it.” (The realest slogan there ever was.)

 

 

3. Shift Your Self-Perception

 

 

I learned about this technique on a podcast and loved it. Part of the reason I’ve struggled with getting shit done in the past is because I believe I’m the kind of person who puts shit off, and so my behavior is perpetuated by the story that I tell myself. So to break out of this, I created a shift in my self-perception by adjusting my mental narrative.

 

 

Tell yourself that you are the kind of person who gets things done at the first opportunity. I told myself I was this kind of person, backing it with the feeling of a big “YES, I AM this person!” I kept telling myself this, affirming this, so that I started EMBODYING this persona and identity. (This is also kind of related to the way I believe manifestation works, thanks to our reticular activating system – but I’ll write another post about that soon where I talk about it in greater depth, and I’ll come back and link it here.)

 

 

4. Start Your Day Right

 

 

Build in easy habits, like making your bed in the morning as soon as you wake up. This idea was popularized by Admiral William H. McRaven’s 2014 University of Texas commencement speech. Taking a moment to make your bed at the start of your day builds in a sense of accomplishment early on, so that you have the feeling of a win as soon as you begin your day. Admiral McRaven talks about it here:

 

 

 

 

That feeling is so important – especially for setting the tone for the rest of your day. I’ve found that it feels easier for me to take on “to do” items throughout the rest of the day when I have a good start, because I’m already setting a direction for my day of being proactive and accomplished. If get the ball rolling on productivity early on, then I usually want to keep it going throughout the rest of the day. (If you haven’t seen this video, The Choice, check it out for a fun and entertaining, but powerful, illustration of the cumulative results of individual choices in small everyday moments.) You can even start building in more items to your morning routine, which can take the stress off of the rest of your day because you’ve got the other items that you need to take care of knocked out of the way in the morning, running on autopilot.

 

 

 

 

5. Prioritize

 

 

Work off a to do list. I’m really good at doing this for work, but I admit I could get better at this in my personal life. Pick the top 3 – 5 items that are the biggest things to move you forward, in the big picture. The smaller things may or may not get done, but taking care of the most important things before the day is done contributes to feeling more accomplished and actually being more effective in the long run, in order to meaningfully move closer to the results you want.

 

 

6. Set Short Timers (Pomodoro Method)

 

 

I think the original Pomodoro Method is supposed to be for a 20 minute timer, but I think it’s good to go off a window of time that makes sense for you and the task that you’re trying to get done. So how I do this is I like to set a 20 minute timer to go hard on a task – like tidying the living room, writing a letter, etc. – and then break from the task when the timer goes off. This helps me not get caught in the trap of working endlessly on something, OR on the other hand, helps me buckle down and make some progress on a task instead of feeling like it will take too long and therefor justifying continuing to put it off to an undetermined day (which translates to: never). It’s kind of like the idea of how we occupy whatever time we have available for whatever it is we’re doing (like how I can take 30 minutes to do my makeup, or 5 minutes, depending on how much time I really have before I have to be out that door).

 

 

7. Go Easy On Yourself

 

 

Sometimes I feel like shit is a disaster if I don’t do x, y, z by a certain time and I start despairing in a bad way (the kind that makes everyone else around me suffer, because my bad moods are sticky, deeply affecting, and highly contagious). But honestly, it’s usually fine. One way to check yourself that I like to use is to ask, “Is this going to matter in 5 years?” (Or enter a different time period – Will it matter in a year? In 2 weeks? And so on.)

 

 

8. Be Realistic

 

 

If I have a huge project to work on that I’m dreading started, I have to be realistic with myself. I’m not going to do a 6 month project in a night. And that’s ok – I have to call that early on and plan it advance accordingly. The best way to do that is to chunk it up. I use a ton of tools to organize the parts of a project and track everything in an organized manner. I use my phone notes, calendar reminders, calendar, a physical planner / notebook, and even emails and text messages to myself (I personally love the schedule-send feature on Gmail). The way I like to do this is to work backwards from the date that I am working toward, with smaller actionable steps broken out that I can do in smaller chunks of time. Then taking action on those smaller steps – using the tips above, probably – helps me feel productive and on top of what I’m working on, as opposed to feeling stressed out and panicked at the last moment. (Which definitely still happens. In fact, it happened with me at work this morning, precisely because I did NOT follow any of my advice that I listed above. When I DO follow my advice above, I’m a total rock star, I’m happy with myself, and feeling golden.)

 

 

9. Find the Deeper Motivation

 

 

A bigger picture tip, this isn’t a quick one. This one is a slower build, but this makes more of a difference in the longer run. When you can connect with your deeper WHY – like, in life – then it’s so much easier to be motivated in every moment. It doesn’t even have to be a conscious thing, once you start living from this place. It can start operating on your subconscious, where you feel much more clearly about where you are driven and why you are living, from the big picture. When I have that locked in, it is so much easier for me to do just about anything in life. We all have bigger motivations and things that we are truly living for, but sometimes it takes a little reset to remember that and hold it closer to our hearts. But when you do, it makes such a difference.

 

 

10. Reward Yourself

 

 

I am reward driven, so sometimes I build in rewards for myself like dessert, a snack break, a video, or something else that I let myself look forward to. It’s something to look forward to on the other side of something that I don’t really feel that excited about. Ideally, I’d get to the point where I don’t mind doing the “thing” as I’m doing it, but for now this more basic conditioning method seems to do the trick often enough where I find value in it. Plus it makes me feel less guilty when I do let myself indulge in said treat, so that’s nice because the things that I was going to do anyway for fun that aren’t necessarily good for me, are now transformed to “good” things because they are attached to me being productive. (Definitely not the best of all my tips, but I’m just being real about what works for me.)

 

 

Side Note: Comment on Mental Health

 

 

Sometimes you really can’t get it going on your own and you need a little extra help. Full disclosure: I’ve never taken medication nor seen a psychiatrist. But I wish I had in the past, particularly for certain more difficult periods in my life. I think I could have gotten things going a lot more easily and quickly than I did, rather than waiting around for my depression cloud to lift through whatever circumstances it would end up moving through. If you are struggling to get through your day-to-day, consider professional help to get you stable so you can live the life you deserve.

 

 

…

 

 

And that’s it for now!

 

 

I hope I can expand on this in the near future – maybe at the end of the year, or the beginning of the new year – and add some new methods, or report back that I’m cured of my lazy bitch syndrome, but like I said, I’m being honest about what does / has worked for me to get myself into action when I really don’t feel like it. I think it’s something we all deal with, and to be honest it was getting to the point where I had to do something about it because it’s not cute to be lazy and unproductive as an adult when there is really just a lot to do. As a mom, it can be tricky too because now you add an extra human into the mix who is extremely needy and can easily double the amount of time it takes to do any single task, but we still have the same needs that were there before and just need to find out how to reorganize our time and direct our energy to get the things done, that we need to get done.

 

 

Maybe that’s another post to write in the future.

 

 

Anyhow, I’m turning it over to you now – what do you think of these tips I wrote about? Which ones sound intriguing to you, and have you tried any of them? And most importantly, what tips did I NOT write about that you can share with me? Share it in the comments 🙂

 

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