90% of productivity advice is BS. Here’s what really matters

How to make productivity work for you

Adete Dahiya
5 min readOct 4, 2021

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Photo from Unsplash

Productivity is the new buzzword. In fact, it has been for a while now. And productivity content floods the internet. I was recommended 5 productivity articles and two videos just this morning.

The problem? It’s the same stuff regurgitated again and again.

Another problem? Most of the productivity content overlaps with content around success and making money. And even though those are worthwhile pursuits, your regular life doesn’t just revolve around work. It also revolves around relationships, entertainment, and having fun.

This is why here are a few important factors to consider if you want to be productive without killing yourself and make the whole concept work for YOU.

Productivity is more biological than you think.

It’s not all just a mindset hack.

What you ate, how you slept, how your emotional plane is — all of these affect your productivity severely. For women, the hormonal fluctuation during their menstrual cycle is a major influencer of productivity. You can check out this article that explains how you can actually work with your menstrual cycle to work better.

So often when you’re not being productive, it could be due to a completely biological reason and not just because of procrastination. The way to overcome this is by analyzing your own patterns, understanding them, and then creating a routine that accommodates them.

It’s not about doing more

So often the perception about productivity is that it is to help you do more. That’s not what it is about at all. The aim of productivity is to help us gain back control over our time so that we can spend it doing things we actually care about.

It is about optimally utilizing our time so that not every hour of every day is spent working. And doing this requires you to prioritize, figure out what really is important to you, and then create a schedule that helps you focus on what’s important. It’s hard work.

Productivity tools are actually helpful

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Adete Dahiya

Sharing ideas on how to live & work better | Writer & artist pursuing MA in Psychology I Subscribe to read more: www.adete.co/newsletter