Chapter 324 - How To Be More Productive By Working Less[1]

It took me 18 months to write The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F.u.c.k. Over that time period, I wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 words for the book (about 600 pages). Most of that came in the final three months. In fact, I can confidently say I got far more done in the final three months than I did in the first 12 combined.

Now, is that because I was on a deadline and worked like an insane person? Did I shove Adderall up my ass and work in 36-hour spurts or something?

No, in fact, those last three months, I worked less each day than I did the first 12, yet I still accomplished far more.

In this article, I'd like to make a simple argument (backed with lots of shitty images I created in MS Paint): that when it comes to productivity, things are not what they seem.

Every productivity book on the planet, from David Allen to Benjamin Franklin, tells you more or less the same thing: wake up at the ass-crack of dawn and drink some stimulating liquid, segment your work periods into bite-sized chunks organized by urgency and importance, keep fastidious lists and calendars, and schedule appointments 15 weeks in advance and be early to everything.

F.u.c.k that. I hate mornings. You know what my "morning routine" usually is? Jerk off and read Facebook. And if I'm lucky, the garbage on my newsfeed will piss me off enough that I'll start writing without even realizing it (after all, what's more important than proving to someone on the internet that they're wrong?).

The truth is, I do some of my best writing at 3 AM while blasting Every Time I Die into my eardrums. I take random Thursdays off. I hate calendars and after running my own online business for almost 10 years, I still don't have one.

That's what works for me and probably not what works for you. So why even bother talking about it?

I believe productivity is a deeply personal thing. We all have different brains and, therefore, different preferences, perspectives, and situations where we feel most effective. Thus, the few times I've attempted to wade into the productivity waters on this site, instead of jerking off over new apps or morning rituals, I've focused on understanding one's own psychology.

For example, procrastination is deeply tied to anxiety – so it's important to develop an understanding of your own neuroses and fears. Action has a momentum to it, and so developing personal rituals to get your own snowball rolling downhill is likely far more important than what yerba mate supplements to take, or what f.u.c.k.i.n.g yoga mat to sit and scratch your ass on in the morning.

Aside from birthing me my first grey hairs and keeping me up at night more times than I'd like to count, The Subtle Art taught me a lot about the nature of work. And a lot of that had to do with how my perception of the work itself evolved over the course of writing the book. So much so that I want to take some time and write a post about the nature of work itself.

Because see, this may surprise you, but not all work is created equal.

Productivity tips for, say, painting a landscape in watercolors, are probably not useful for finishing your tax returns on time. Or the advice that might help you come up with a way to re-organize the team you manage to get rid of some bottlenecks is not the same advice that would help you clean your apartment faster.

So if you've got a burning desire to paint a landscape or do your tax return this weekend,1 listen the f.u.c.k up.