I was sitting at my computer. Time to be productive!
So I browsed to my blog, ready to start writing a world-shattering
blog post. Except I felt a bit tired, and decided to check my e-mail
before starting writing. And then I checked facebook. And then reddit.
Next thing I know, it’s two hours later, and I still haven’t done anything. Oops!
I used to do this nearly daily for I don’t know how long. Then, one
day, I got fed up with shooting myself in the foot like that, and
decided to dig into my mind to figure out why I’m killing my
productivity like that. And I found a… surprising answer.
And then, talking to others, I found out that many people make
exactly the same mistake. So I’m writing this post, in hopes that you
can learn from my experience. Onwards, my friends!
My erroneous belief about productivity
My whole problem stemmed from a deep-seated belief that I need to be busy in order to be productive.
Now, if you’ve been reading personal development blogs for a while,
you will know that just because you’re busy, it doesn’t mean you’re
being productive.
But the converse isn’t true either! You don’t necessarily need to be busy in order to be productive.
(If you have a grasp of elementary logic, you will
know the two statements above aren’t logically equivalent. If you can’t
see it, just take my word for it 
.)
.)
And so, when it was afternoon and I was quite tired, but still wanted
to get some work done in the day… based on my beliefs, I sat down at
the computer because I believed I needed to be busy to be productive.
Which was stupid. I didn’t have the energy to do anything useful, and I only ended up wasting time.
In hindsight, I should have seen it earlier. In high school, one of
my least favourite classes was chemistry. Not because of the subject – I
actually really liked it. But we often had chemistry late in the day,
and our teacher always insisted on us looking busy. She
couldn’t understand that taking some 5-10 minutes to shut my eyes would
let me recharge my batteries and do useful work for the rest of the
lesson. Instead, she insisted that I be busy the whole time, which would
leave me in a brain-dead pretending-to-be-doing-something limbo for the
whole lesson.
And unwittingly, I ended up absorbing that belief and doing the same to myself, years later. Shucks!
Your time off is often more productive than your busy-time
So what’s a more useful belief? That taking some time off to relax can be far more productive than doing busywork!
In my case, I learned that when I want to do some work but feel
tired, the most productive thing is to get some rest. Sometimes I take a
20-minute power nap. Sometimes I just lie around and think.
Either way, my brain gets the rest it was demanding, and I can soon be back to doing productive stuff!
The key point here is that the brain-dead limbo you find yourself in
by forcing yourself to be busy doesn’t allow your brain to rest
properly! You’re neither being productive, nor getting some rest.
If you’re doing any mind-intensive work, the time off is often just
as valuable as the time you spend working. There’s a reason the great
minds of the past (like Einstein, or Newton) have spent a lot of time just daydreaming and thinking about stuff. Your brain needs time to process and organize your thoughts.
So take a deep breath, and allow yourself to relax.
Because taking a break is often the most productive thing you could be doing.
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