How to Do Your Best Work While Being Productive

You've got the wrong idea about productivity

There’s often a tussle between doing your best work and productivity.

Doing your best work requires focus and intensity and a flow state.

It needs you to forget the existence of time and enter a trance state of mind.

And let me tell you — before your mind starts drawing the inevitable comparison — that it is not like being high on substances.

Here you are working and in control of your actions. It’s a different high. It’s not being triggered by an external chemical.

Doing your best work requires long, uninterrupted chunks of time, and on the contrary, the law of productivity demands that you get focused work done in a faster way so that you can get back to your life.

How do we reconcile the two?

Do we have to sacrifice productivity for doing our best work?

That would be a bummer, no?

Well, I don’t think so.

Let’s again read what the law of productivity demands.

“Focused work.”

Exactly!

It’s asking you to focus and cut down on all non-essential tasks that you get swept into every day.

It’s asking you to say NO to mindless scrolling, replying to random emails, going to useless meetings.

It’s asking you to use those 4 or 6 hours in a day for one thing and one thing only.

It’s also asking you to demand it from your boss. To stand up for yourself and tell them convincingly that you are better off not doing that extra task or not chiming into that meeting.

Forget 6 hours.

Even a chunk of highly focused 3 hours can yield exceptional results.

You need to prioritise the work that aligns with your skills.

If you’re a writer, focus on the actual writing. The promotions and social media posting can happen later.

If you’re a designer, start your day by jumping into the act of creation and not by answering client emails. The client can wait a few hours.

If you’re a founder whose core competence is product, dive into that early on into the day. The investor call can wait.

If I had a dollar for every skilled individual spending their days doing everything but the work that utilizes their main skillset, I’d be a rich man.

In fact, it’s baffling the lengths people go to procrastinate on doing the work that they know they should be doing, the work that their soul wants to do, and the work that they know can produce high-quality results.

Not allotting focused hours to such work every day is doing a great disservice to your potential and competence.

Juggling a bunch of hygiene work and claiming efficiency is a temporary dopamine hit designed to distract you from real work. It’s the refuge of the mediocre.

The less real work you do, the more purposeless your work will feel at the end of the day.

Being productive isn’t about being efficient.

It’s about being effective. It’s about doing the work you were destined to do and doing it hard.

It’s about doing your best work, the work that leads to a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness.