Everything is a To Do
Eeeeeevvvvvveeeerrryyyyything
Do you ever notice how we tend to lump productivity into a category of “output”? How much can you do? I think that’s how the normies do it. It’s about what you can accomplish, what you create, the goal you move on, the expenditure of energy. It’s about production, producing.
No wonder we go so hard and burn out. We are all about output. Productivity seems to equal output. And that, to me, is exhausting.
And then we say that we need to take time for us. We need to recharge. We need to do self-care. This is separated from the output. This isn’t lumped in with productivity. It tends to be one or the other thing. We are either working hard, or we are recharging/recovering.
My view on productivity is that it is both of those things. It’s output and it’s input. They are all to dos…to be done. Productivity is all of it.
Input, in my opinion, is not something to do as a reaction to aggressive output. Yes, that helps, but it should not be our norm. It’s something to do as a part of life, as a part of our daily lives. Don’t we always go hard until burnout and THEN decide to do something about it. We try, try, try harder, burnout, freak out, then we finally make time for self care, then repeat. My hope is that we can bring the input into our lives as part of our productivity. Because they are the same.
Every single thing in life is a task. It’s a to do. Did you to do it? Then it was to did? Meditating - to do item. Playing with child - to do item. Long shower to escape the world - to do item. Sending the email - to do item.
It’s all a to do item. The word ‘item or ‘task’ sounds gross and all, because it doesn’t really sound good when saying that “quality time with my kid is something I put a checkmark on in a to do list”, because isn’t that what a task is? A thing to be checked off? But that doesn’t change what it is: it is a choice we made with our time. A great choice! But a choice. We choose every moment of the day, we are constantly choosing what to do with our time, whether it’s escaping a responsibility, moving our needle forward on a goal, or on some rejuvenating input stuff…or doomscrolling.
How will you be productive? Can you make time for input tasks even when you don’t feel like you need them? Preventative input tasks, in my experience, are so much more helpful than reactionary input tasks that occur only when the shit is hitting the fan. As an example, meditating every morning for 5 minutes is a lot more effective than meditating for 20 minutes one day when everything is going wrong.
All the concepts around ADHD are easy enough to understand, but a monstrous pain in the ass to implement with any kind of consistency. If you are struggling with time, how to add input to your heavy output days, reach out. That’s my particular expertise. I do productivity coaching/consulting. I help through 1:1, through small group coaching (4 people per group), and inside our membership community.