10 Simple Things To Do To Be Productive When You Don’t Feel Like It

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means I earn a small commission if you purchase or book through my link, at no extra cost to you.

• Save

Sometimes it’s difficult to be productive no matter how hard you try. As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying to edit this post for a couple of days now, but all I did was wasting time on social media or knitting and watching movies.

There are days when no matter what I do to keep procrastination in check, I fail immensely. It happens mostly when I don’t have a clear vision, feel disconnected from my goals, or take a longer break from whatever it is I’m doing.

To make it even more difficult, I struggle to focus on things to do to be productive when I can hear someone talking or in a messy room.

Your environment plays a crucial role in feeling productive, but what if you don’t have perfect conditions to work?

Does it mean you should just leave it be and make yourself believe that there’s nothing to be done and it’s perfectly reasonable to not do any productive work during the day?

Are messy, non-perfect surroundings the excuse to spend all the time you have on social media?

I don’t think so.

Knowing that I can’t do much to change my circumstances right now, I realised two things. I can keep living in a victim mentality and dream about a better life, or take action, do as much as I can in the best way I can and make those dreams a reality.

It’s not the first time when I’ve been struggling with procrastination, so all I needed was to go check my toolbox and some of the proven techniques to get back to being productive, better version of myself.

So, what exactly you can do to stop procrastinating? Do you need to hyper-focus on cleaning and organising your house beforehand? Or maybe change environment and work in a cafe? Let’s find out!

Things To Do To Be Productive: How Can I Become Productive?

Usually, we rely on a motivation to get work done. We work when we feel like it, procrastinate when we’re low on energy and have no motivation. It doesn’t happen just when you work for yourself – I remember binging Suits on Netflix while working in a corporate job. It’s a miracle nobody caught me, lol.

Since I started working for myself, I found it very difficult to focus on my tasks. Tens of open tabs in a browser keep calling me to scroll through Facebook, watch YouTube or do anything else than writing. Washing machine running in the background irritates me and makes my thoughts go running wildly. Cartoon my daughter watches while I’m trying to be productive, distracts me and tries to suck me in.

Let’s not forget about phone notifications. They can be really distracting.

When I think about all of that now, it looks like everything seems to be more important than writing, editing, or simply working on my goals and creating a life I love.

Since I’ve never treated blogging as a job, I allowed distractions to take over.

It’s time to make some changes to create the life I’ve always wanted to live. And getting more productive is one of them.

Remind Yourself Of Your “Why”

The biggest motivation comes from knowing what your goals are and how your life will change once you achieve them. So any time you procrastinate, think of all the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing. Do you need to finish the project today so you’ll get paid sooner? Or maybe you’ve struggled with finishing them on time before and you’ll get fired once you miss the deadline once again? Sometimes even the smallest action might have a huge impact on your life. Remind yourself of your “why” regularly so you’ll feel more inclined to do the work.

SAVE IT FOR LATER!

• Save

• Save

Pomodoro Technique

I bet you’ve heard about Pomodoro Technique once or twice. Using this time management method, you break your task into 25-minute intervals separated by 5-minute breaks. After four intervals called Pomodoros, you take a longer, half an hour break.

When I first attempted to work using this method, it just irritated me. Every time I try something new, I like to follow the exact rules, otherwise it makes me very anxious. So I chose a task I wanted to focus on, put a timer for 25 minutes, and… did merely anything. I don’t remember the exact thing I wanted to accomplish, but I bet it was something I really didn’t want to do. Forcing myself to do it by using the Pomodoro technique clearly didn’t work. So I ditched it for months.

I really enjoy writing but sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it. And this “sometimes” can last months. I can easily spend half an hour trying to write something meaningful and end up with a hundred words that barely make any sense. There are also days when I can write 400 words in 5-10 minutes and I don’t want to stop when the alarm signals the end of the 25-minute interval.

It made me wonder, what can I do to make Pomodoro work for me? The answer wasn’t as easy as I’d like it to be. I’ve tried many apps, but they didn’t really help. Forest app motivated me until… it became an obsession.

I was extremely anxious every time I was using it because I was afraid of having to take a break during my session and losing a tree. I also felt compelled to use it every time I wanted to work on something, otherwise my work was pointless.

So, one day, I bought a cube timer, and it changes everything. I don’t need to use my phone while working, which is great. There are no statistics to obsess about. I can take breaks whenever I need. Life is good.

If I don’t feel like doing a task, I put a stopwatch on and start working, knowing that it’s just for 5 minutes. If I get in a flow, I’ll continue. Otherwise, I’ll move to another task. Any time spent on moving the needle towards the completion of the task counts.

Paper Planning

I’m a digital planning kind of gal. Being able to have access to my notes, calendar, plans for the day from any device wherever I am right now is great. I tried all digital planning tools I could find – Google Calendar, Asana, ClickUp, digital planners, Notion… Anything I could really think of. And while ClickUp works the best for me right now, it still isn’t perfect.

Lately, I’ve realised that nothing beats handwriting in a notebook. I didn’t know how badly I missed the feeling of writing with a real pen. When I know I might need a bit of a push to complete my tasks, I go to ClickUp, check all the tasks I set for today, and write them all down.

Then, I make a note of how many Pomodoros I think it’ll take me to do them all. I like to do that in the evening before, so I know exactly what I need to do when I wake up. It limits the amount of decisions I need to make during the day, saving mental energy for more important things. It also makes my mind feel clearer and calmer when I go to bed.

When I have all tasks planned out, I sit down and start doing them one by one. I don’t specify how long each Pomodoro should last for, and sometimes I need more of intervals I initially thought I would. If that’s the case, I might need to postpone finishing the task on the next day. If it’s something urgent, I move things around to accommodate it.

Don’t beat yourself up when you won’t do as much progress as you thought you would. Any progress matters!

Leave Empty Sink At Night

Empty sink – what does it have to do with feeling productive? Your work doesn’t revolve around cooking or kitchen altogether! Well.. mine doesn’t too, but I’ve noticed that leaving the empty sink in the evening makes me more productive, anyway.

I usually leave the mess in the kitchen every evening. Then, when I wake up, I have no space on the countertops and I have to start my day by cleaning up after yesterday’s dinner. This creates only more stress early in the morning and sets a negative tone for the day, which leads to being less productive, more stressed out, and being unable to focus on the task at hand.

Shift Things Around

Forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do rarely brings any positive results. Sometimes, though, we can make our work more interesting to increase productivity.

When you work on a huge project, sometimes you can choose what you’ll work on today. This way, you can see how you feel and decide what would be best to focus on today. Shifting things around can not only increase your motivation but also boost your mood a little. Feeling more in control and not having to do things you don’t want to do can make you feel better.

This is one thing I realised after weeks of trying to write regularly and failing repeatedly. When I look at my publishing calendar, I can see huge gaps between published posts. Every time I do something, I feel pressured to follow the exact steps that proved to be successful for someone else. So instead of writing and having fun, I focused heavily on doing research, and faking productivity this way.

At some point I realised that’s not the way to go – I love writing, but all that research and planning weeks in advance killed the joy. So now, every time when I want to write, I go through all the ideas and pick one that looks the most interesting. If I get inspired somewhere along the way, I’ll explore it further and create a post out of it.

When I was developing my app, in the morning I took time to check in with myself and see what I’d like to focus on today. When I couldn’t figure out something, I moved to another part to keep moving the needle. I did something similar in my 9-5 job, where even though I had deadlines to meet, I could usually decide what to focus on today.

Limit Distractions

It takes 23 minutes on average to regain focus once you get distracted. But what if distractions are everywhere and you don’t know how to limit them? Start by creating a list of all distractions you noticed during the day.

Have you spent half a day constantly fighting with thoughts that you should clean the room?

Do you need to email someone but keep postponing it so it pops in and out of your mind constantly?

Or maybe you just keep opening new loops but don’t close them at all?

Write down everything that distracted you from your work and think how you can prevent that from happening in the future.

If you noted that your room is messy, schedule time to clean and organise it on Saturday.

Is your inbox a mess? Take some time to clear it in the evening.

Does your child keep asking for toys or snacks? Create a snack station they can easily access by themselves and prepare an interesting activity for them so they’re entertained while you get some stuff done in peace.

There’s a solution for almost every problem.

You just need to make a conscious effort to find it.

Block Social Media

This one goes closely with limiting distractions. Social media distracts us so many times during the day! Most people keep their phones nearby all the time and reach for them without thinking about it.

I’m not able to count how many times I check Facebook or Instagram during the day. Blocking social media can be a really effective way to increase your productivity.

Turn Off Notifications

How many times a day you receive some kind of notification? You can check that in the Screen Time app if you have an iPhone. Not than long ago, I was getting around 200 notifications every day even though I was blocking them immediately after installing a new app. Right now I’m down to 27 notifications and I could easily limit them even further.

Every time you receive notification, you’re tempted to pick up your phone and check what’s happening. When you do that, you’ll likely check Instagram or TikTok too, and end up scrolling mindlessly through the feed for a long time. Go through the list of installed apps on your phone, and choose which one are worth keeping on, and which ones you should block to get a peace of mind.

Use Noise Cancelling Headphones

That’s one of my favourite ways to block or at limit distractions. I’m not able to focus when I can hear everything that’s happening around me. Washing machine, cartoons, noisy neighbours, cars running outside, someone talking on the phone behind the wall…

There’s so much noise around us 24/7.

While noise cancelling headphones won’t be able to block all the noises, they limit them immensely. This allows you to be more productive as fewer things disturb you.

I started using such headphones back when I was working in an office cubicle and it was such a relief to not be able to hear all the gossips running around. It was almost impossible to focus on work with all that talking around.

But noise cancelling isn’t helpful only while working – they bring a relief every time when you’re overwhelmed with noise, which can happen very often when you have small children. Trust me. Even though I love my Sony headphones, I got AirPods Pro just because I wanted something small and less noticeable to wear during the day when noise became too much for me.

SAVE IT FOR LATER!

• Save

• Save

Listen To Music

One thing that helps me the most to get into the “work mode” is listening to one type of music every time I work. It doesn’t matter what you listen to, but it shouldn’t take your focus away from your tasks.

Back when I was developing my mobile app, I liked to listen to Work From Home playlist on Spotify. Every time I listen to it now, my mind still immediately goes back to that time and I feel like opening Android Studio and starting a new project.

Listening to any songs proved to be a huge distraction while doing any creative work, though. So, I usually listen to LoFi Hip Hop Radio on YouTube while I’m writing. This way, I started associating that type of music with creative work. Sometimes I don’t even need to turn it on. The sole motion of putting my headphones on is enough to get to work.

Final Words For 10 Simple Things To Do To Be Productive When You Don’t Feel Like It

There are days when we can’t focus or force ourselves to work, no matter how hard we try. There are also days when we’re motivated and ready to work since the minute we woke up. Both states are completely normal and keep alternating between each other.

I’d be lying if I said that I always have high energy, enjoy what I do, or have perfect conditions to work towards my goals. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, but there’s plenty of boring stuff that comes with it that isn’t always easy for me to get through.

That’s why I came up with those 10 tips to make you be more productive when you don’t want to be. Ditching procrastination can be difficult, sure, but those tips made it a lot easier for me. I hope they’ll help you too!

Rooting for you,
M.