Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes, 51s. It’s skimmable, though.
I think it’s human nature to resist getting things done every once in a while.
Over the course of a week, as your energy levels ebb and flow relative to everything from how much sleep you get, to how much caffeine you consume, to how much time you spend with people, there will inevitably be some periods of time when you’re simply not feeling it—despite doing everything right—and when you have to fight the urge to waste time to get work done. Just this morning, after getting a solid eight hours of sleep, I hit the gym early, planned out my entire day, and ate a healthy breakfast, but despite doing all I could to cultivate my energy levels, I simply didn’t have enough energy in the tank to do good work.
Thankfully, over the last few years (and especially over the course of my Year of Productivity project) I’ve honed my strategy for battling this resistance. When you have to get stuff done but don’t have enough energy in the tank, I think these 10 tactics will help you out more than anything else. I hope you find them as helpful as I have!
1. Zoom out
When you zoom out from a task you’re working on and think about how it fits into the bigger picture of your life, you can see at a higher vantage point why it’s important that you get it done.
Studying for a boring school midterm? Acing that exam will help you get your degree, graduate with better grades, and get that job you want. Writing a tedious work report? That report will help you grow your business and get you one step closer to world domination. Writing an article for your productivity blog? That article will hopefully help your readers become more productive so they can free up time for their most meaningful tasks.
Zooming out to see how a task fits into the bigger picture of your life will help you understand its purpose and see how important the task actually is. (And if it turns out a task has no purpose or doesn’t make an impact in your life, you should probably eliminate, delegate, or shrink it instead.)
Photo source: Scott Robinson.
2. Look out for the seven procrastination triggers
According to Tim Pychyl, who has been researching procrastination for more than 20 years, there are seven characteristics ugly tasks have that make you more likely to procrastinate with them. They include whether a task is:
- Boring
- Frustrating
- Difficult
- Ambiguous
- Unstructured
- Lacking in personal meaning or intrinsic rewards
When you zoom out from a task you’re struggling with and ask yourself which of these attributes the task has, you can then make a plan to flip these characteristics (e.g., make the task more fun, clear, or easy) to warm up to completing it.
3. Mind your self-talk
If most people talked to their friends the way they talk to themselves, they wouldn’t have a lot of friends left.
Unfortunately, when you put pressure on yourself to get stuff done when you’re just not feeling it, your negative self-talk can go through the roof. It does for me, at least.
As an experiment, the next time you find yourself putting off work, pay attention to what you say to yourself in your head. If you find yourself saying a lot of things like, “I can’t do this,” “I’m no good at this,” and “Why can’t I just stop wasting time,” you’re probably only making things worse.
Some studies have shown that upwards of 80% of your self-talk is negative, and when that number only goes up as you put pressure on yourself to get more done, it’s important to be mindful of how kind you’re being to yourself in the process.
4. Give yourself permission to do a bad job
Whenever I feel stuck with an article, idea, or project, I simply give myself permission to do the worst job imaginable. Since I’m the only person who will ever see the original version of whatever I’m working on, after I give myself permission to create crap, I always come up with better ideas than if I had waited for a good idea to come along. After ideas inevitably begin to flow, I remove the bad ones I had at the beginning.
Everyone’s work is different, but if you’re responsible for completing a lot of challenging solo tasks, try giving yourself permission to do a terrible job. If you don’t believe this will work, trust me, you should have seen the first draft of this article.
5. Shrink your work
Trying to work too hard or too much when you’re not feeling it will only serve to discourage you further. To combat this, shrink how long you’ll work on something until you feel more comfortable with how much time you’ll spend on it.
For example, if you need to work on a report but you’re simply not feeling it, shrink how long you’ll work on the report until you no longer feel resistance to it.
For example: “Can I work on this report for two hours? Nope, too long. Can I work on the report for one hour? A bit better, but still too much—the thought of it puts me off. Can I work on the report for 45 minutes? You know what? That sounds perfect. I’ll work on the report for 45 minutes.”
This is one of my favorite hacks to get started on something I’m not in the mood for. Plus, once you get the ball rolling, you may end up working for longer than you originally intended.
6. Set limits
As I found out the hard way during my productivity experiment to work 90-hour weeks for a month, throwing more time at something you have to get done often makes you less productive than when you set limits. For example, when you schedule just an hour to get a report finished as opposed to working on it throughout the day, you create a sense of urgency for yourself, and push yourself to work harder over that hour to get the report done before the deadline you impose on yourself.
When you set a hard limit for how long you’ll work on a task, you motivate yourself to expend more energy over a shorter period of time to get a task done faster. This tactic also shrinks your work, but in a totally different way than tactic 5.
7. Get a change of scenery
We’re creatures of habit, and as such, we behave differently depending on what environment we’re in.
Often a change of scenery is all you need to get out of a rut and start working again. For example, if you work in an office, try exposing yourself to a change of scenery by arriving at work early when fewer people are in the office, or by working from home or out of a coffee shop if you have that flexibility.
Whenever I find myself in a rut working from home, I almost always leave the house to work at a co-working space or coffee shop to expose myself to a change of scenery. Every time, it makes a huge difference in how much energy and focus I have.
8. Disconnect from the Internet
Disconnecting from the Internet is one of the most underrated ways to become more productive.
According to research, about half of your time on the Internet is spent procrastinating, and when you’re not in the right mindset to work, that number can go through the roof. Disconnecting from the Internet—even for just an hour or two—will help you hunker down, waste less time, and become more productive when you just don’t feel like it. Especially when the switch to turn the Internet off on your computer, phone, and tablet is just a couple of taps or clicks away, do so if you want to waste less time and get more done.
9. Bribe yourself
When all else fails, try bribing yourself to meet your productivity goals by rewarding yourself when you meet them.
A reward can be anything from a coffee, to 15 minutes on Facebook, to a 30-minute break, but as Charles Duhigg (the author of The Power of Habit) made clear in my interview with him, for the reward to be truly motivating it has to be genuinely rewarding to you.
Bribing yourself isn’t my favorite strategy on this list (since it involves tricking yourself), but it serves as a damn good motivator every once in a while. Especially when food is involved.
10. Embrace unproductivity
Productivity is one of the most powerful ideas in the world: the more productive you become and the more you can get done in less time, the more time you free up to do things that are the most important to you. But it’s totally unrealistic to expect yourself to be productive 24/7.
Often “not feeling it” is a great sign that you should step back from your work to recharge and be unproductive for a while. Completely separating yourself from your work may not always feel like the best course of action, but when you’re not in the mood to work, it’s worth asking yourself whether you’re simply procrastinating, or whether you’re genuinely in need of a break.
Breaks help you recharge, reduce your negative self-talk, and warm up to tasks that you’re resistant to completing. Taking a break from productivity every once in a while will help you become much more productive at the end of the day—and when you’re mindful of your energy levels as you detach yourself from work, you can pick the perfect time to end your break and start working again.
