5 Reasons Why You’re Not Productive

We’ve all been there: you spend the whole day doing what you think is work, only to reach 7 pm and realize that you didn’t really do anything. The next question is why you’re not productive. You didn’t actually complete any of the tasks on your to do list, but you feel like you did so much!

Here’s the thing, you probably did a lot. A whole lot. You just didn’t do what you should have been doing. You did what you thought you needed to do to in order to do what you planned to do. But that’s both a confusing sentence and a confusing plan of action. I would know, this is the state of my brain half the time. But, the good thing is, these are usually caused by similar patterns, and they’re fixable. So here are five possible reasons why you’re not productive, and a couple things you can do to fix it.

You’re waiting for inspiration or motivation.

This is probably the biggest one I see from others, and one that I’ve suffered from myself. And it’s one of the easiest to miss, because we think it’s somehow going to make us more productive once we get that spark. Motivation is great, and inspiration is divine. We get some of our best work out in spurts of motivation.

But the problem, as anyone can tell you, is that motivation is temporary. Inspiration is fleeting. These are not foundational emotions that you can rely on time and again in order to get done what needs to be done. The reason why you’re not productive is because you’re waiting to be given the green light to do it.

Some things, like the laundry or admin work on your blog or that homework assignment, just need to get done. They simply just do. If I waited for motivation to strike before I washed my sheets, it wouldn’t be a cute situation. And often, once you sit yourself down to do the work, you find your momentum. Don’t rely on motivation. Rely on discipline. Develop a routine, develop the habit first.

You’re disorganized.

Here’s another top contender, and this doesn’t just mean physical organization, though that plays a part. I mean emotional and mental organization. You don’t have a to do list, your head is everywhere, and your main concern isn’t the project in front of you, it’s whatever you’re worrying about in the future. This is incredibly normal, but it’s also incredibly distracting. Part of mindfulness is being in the moment, and when your head is completely elsewhere, you’re not going to be nearly as productive as you could have been.

It’s hard to focus on the emails you need to write when you’re trying to plan dinner. It’s also hard to know what needs to be done if you either don’t clearly have your list memorized or if it isn’t written down. Take moment, breathe. Focus on what’s in front of you, write down the list. You’ve got this. Figure out what it is that you want to do. Brain dumps are great for this, as is a planner. Check out my Filofax here.

You didn’t actually prioritize your work.

Going with the list (mental or physical or digital, do you), something that we as people seem to be fundamentally bad at is prioritizing. We confuse things we think are important with the stuff that actually is. Do you need to clean out your email? As the girl with 18 thousand emails between her email accounts (no I am not kidding, one’s a junk email, don’t judge), I have to constantly fight the urge to clean it out rather than work on my next blog post.

Yes, it’s important. But it ain’t urgent. Anxiety would loooooove to tell me otherwise though.

Something I like to reference that my mom actually introduced to me (Hey Ma, love you) is
the Eisenhower Method. This completely and entirely revamped my routine when it comes to prioritizing what needs to be done, versus what’s important but could be done later. I can go in depth into how to modify it for bloggers later, but at the moment, the idea is simple. Break it down into what is important and urgent (think looming deadline), urgent but not important (flexible deadline), important but not urgent (stuff you can automate like tweets), and not important and not urgent (Netflix).

You’re productively procrastinating.

Quick confession time, this one is just me all the way down. Somehow, we seem to think that if we’re doing some random task that tangentially relates to our project for the day, we’re somehow getting our shit done. Here’s the thing: if there is something that you have to do, like top three on your priority list, you aren’t getting it done by reorganizing your desk for the third time. I call it productive procrastination and it’s how I end up doing most of my chores.

Don’t get me wrong! These things totally need to be done. But the busy work shouldn’t take precedent over the things that you absolutely know needs to be done (unless of course it was one of your priorities for the day). The ancillary stuff will be there when you get done with your work for the day. If you know you need to write two papers, work on the papers first, and during breaks throw in laundry. Go grocery shopping at the end of the day, or schedule time in during the day. But don’t use tidying your desk for desk photos for Instagram (y’all know who you are and I love y’all dearly) in place of actually doing the studying. You just wear yourself out, my dude.

You’re scared to fail.

This is one that underlies pretty much every sort of procrastination, stalling, or just flat out avoiding we do. This is especially true if it’s something that will be shown to others, or somehow evaluated. And, if you’re a perfectionist, it could apply to anything you’ll ever do. We are fundamentally afraid of somehow fucking up whatever it is that we do.

There’s a certain beauty in being wrong, though, which I can elaborate more on later. But we learn from being wrong, not from being right. When we’re wrong, there’s something we can change. And when we’re afraid of being wrong, it keeps us from trying at all. I suffer with this in my blogging. I’m so afraid that whatever I post will flop that I often don’t post at all.

But if you don’t do the damn thing, you more than likely will regret it more than if you had. Not trying at all is the biggest failure. If you’re worried, ask people for input! Ask for help if you can. Go for it, and if it doesn’t come out how you hoped, regroup and try again. And often, a lot of our tasks will never directly result in something that other people will see. So even if we are wrong, no one will know. We can try again in peace.

Let me know what productivity things you struggle with, and how you overcome them, in the comments!