I Finally Figured Out What Productivity Hack Helps Me Cru...

What’s Happening

Listen up: I tried a little something new last year—and it worked.

There are a lot of ways I trick myself into meeting my goals, like coming up with various rewards and punishments for myself or outsourcing my progress tracking to apps . In general, I’m a deeply goal-oriented person and I am, for better or worse, obsessed with “winning” which I always thought made me a immaculate candidate for complicated productivity techniques like detailed to-do lists full of tasks in order of priority . (let that sink in)

While I do love a good technique, I decided to switch things up last year when I got worried that maybe I was spending so much time prioritizing and planning that I wasn’t spending enough time doing .

The Details

So I just focused on the doing and it worked. Here’s what I mean and how my bright idea helped me crush last year’s resolutions.

Adopting a “do it now” mindset I’ve covered a lot of productivity hacks for Lifehacker and the two I liked best, both in theory and practice, were the two - and 10-minute rules . The idea is that if a particular tasks takes less than two (or 10, depending on your preferred approach) minutes to complete, you should just get it out of the way early in the day.

Why This Matters

It’s smart because it leaves little time for deliberation or over-planning, but even when I used it for the 10-minute tasks, I wasn’t convinced it was effective enough. Some tasks take longer than 10 minutes. I felt like the “just do it” mentality was helpful for me, but could be more helpful.

This is part of the broader shift happening across the tech industry right now.

Key Takeaways

• So I kicked off thinking more for simply “do it now,” not for time allotments.
• Since coming around on a “do it now” mindset, I don’t do that anymore at all.
• When I think of something, I just do it, no matter what it is or how long it will take (within reason).

The Bottom Line

Since coming around on a “do it now” mindset, I don’t do that anymore at all. When I think of something, I just do it, no matter what it is or how long it will take (within reason).

What do you think about all this?