Last night was not a good one sleep-wise. Something to do with a 2 year-old singing about The Guffalo from 3am until 5am. Incredibly, my productivity has been at full throttle all morning. Yes tired. But very focused on the individual tasks.
I find this interesting. If I was going to sit there and plan when I was going to do things that best fitted in with what I’d be feeling, I’d have been filing this morning. Instead, I have got through a fair bit of quality stuff.
Why is this? Well, I think it is because we forget what actually drives productivity. Productivity is not a creative process – it is routine. No matter how interesting the work is you are doing, if your aim is to get as much of it done as efficiently as possible, then it is routine.
And routine is best done without inspiration. Instinctively I would say that the day I woke up brimming with hope and motivation is the day I would be at my productive prime. But it rarely is. You see, when you feel as if all guns are blazing, then you are usually inspired by something. What happens to me is that I then spend most of time planning and thinking about things that I would like to do in the future, creative things, rather than get my head down and work.
When I am fully motivated, I am usually not fully motivated to work through my to do list. Why concern myself with the day-to-day business issues when I am up for planning the future of the company. I end the day with little tangible done other than some nicely coloured diagrams.
But today, I haven’t the energy to think. My mind is not up for resisting and instead just goes with the flow. Task to task to task. Maybe I should set an alarm in the toddlers room again tonight…
