Embrace Every Unproductive Day
Introduction
While managing this blog, I gradually developed the habit of “pushing new progress no matter how busy I am,” whether it’s writing articles, short posts, finding topics, fixing bugs, or pushing new features… In short, I strive every day to make the blog better and force myself to refine my thoughts.
This non-linear productivity and focus on the overall goal concept comes from Sam Julien’s Embrace 1% Days and GCP Grey’s discussion on how to plan for the new year.
Non-Linear Productivity
At the end of a long holiday, do you feel a lot of pressure knowing you have to return to an 8-hour workday tomorrow? But in reality, there is no job in the world that requires you to maintain high focus and efficiency for 8 hours every day.
This thought arises from falling into the trap of “to achieve high productivity, every action must be perfect” True productivity is more like a non-linear process, where organizing your mood, trying and failing, reflecting and adjusting are all part of actual output.
Inefficiency is Inevitable, but It Can Be Accepted
Time and willpower are limited resources, and being disciplined does not mean one can maintain high efficiency indefinitely. In the long run, how to reduce the negative impact of inefficiency is also key to maintaining high efficiency. We should embrace every day of inefficiency, maintaining productivity by at least completing 1% of the expected progress.
We might think that achieving 1% progress is almost the same as 0%, so we might as well not do it. However, the purpose of doing this is not to produce output; the main goal is to adjust the mindset to a state where output is possible and to help the brain adapt to the entire process. For example, if you want to write an article but can’t get started, it might be better to just open the editor and write a random introduction or casually browse some saved blogs. Such behavior may seem useless, but it is actually paving the way for future efficiency.
By setting a very low threshold, we can reduce the shame of not completing tasks and accept days of inefficiency.
Conclusion
Most achievements are the sum of a series of attempts and errors. In other words, many imperfect attempts can sometimes yield good results:
- Accepting failure as the norm and improving quickly (rapid iteration and progress)
- Productivity is not just 0 and 1 but a continuous spectrum; you need to start before you can gradually improve (act first, then evaluate)
- Plans are rigid and time-consuming; realizing that perfect plans are not practical (adapt to real environments in a timely manner)