How I’m Supercharging My Productivity For 2023

Everyone needs to start somewhere

Kicking things off with a harsh truth — not all of us are equally cut out for productivity.

That doesn’t mean we can’t all become productive. We can, absolutely. But the playing field isn’t the same, no matter what influential thinkers will have you believe. The commonly touted belief is “if you have a dream, the only reason you haven’t made it come true is that you don’t want it badly enough/you haven’t worked hard enough.” But the truth is, even if we have the basic elements in place — a dream, the zeal to make it come true, and a reasonable amount of talent — many of us have harder obstacles to overcome than just ‘not working enough.’

Case in point — 2022 has been my hardest year, career-wise since I started freelancing in 2018. I moved to the States from India for personal reasons, and the change took a huge mental toll on me. My freelance work paid me handsomely in India and was worth pocket change in dollar terms. And owing to my mental health issues, I could not start pitching to new clients or rebranding myself for a US audience until a few weeks ago. This means, in absolute terms, I’ve barely made any money this year.

You could say that I didn’t make money because I didn’t want it badly enough, or I wasn’t working hard enough.

Or you could say that I didn’t make money because I was too sick to know where to focus my efforts despite wanting to with all my heart and soul.

Okay, rant over, now let’s talk solutions.

2023 is almost here, and many of us are reflecting on how the year has been and what we’d like to do differently starting January 1. Unlike other years, though, I’m no longer counting on the newness of the year alone to motivate me. I know now that I require a solid, positive foundation to be productive — and in that, I don’t think I’m alone. Hoping to wake up on 1st January a magically more effective person is foolish. If you don’t have clear goals to work towards and a clear system to take you there, they won’t just pop up while you’re working off the NYE hangover.

To build that solid foundation, I’m using a “hurdles” approach. So rather than just set down a blanket routine I copied off the internet, I’m looking at my specific barriers to productivity and working out ways around them.

My key hurdles are

• Inertia about starting tasks
• Getting derailed by small irritants (like a messy desk or a lost book)
• Lack of structure with my writing projects
• Unexpected depression flare-ups that affect my concentration

So I’ve been experimenting with things that will

• Reduce my inertia
• Give my brain positive inputs
• Enable me to hit the ground running on creative projects
• Bring me relief, if not joy, during a depression flare-up

The operative word here is “experiment”. Throughout December, I’ve been playing around with different elements, tapping into how I feel in the moment, referencing my past behavioural patterns and creating guidelines that are easy for me to follow and bring positive results quickly. And so far, here’s what has worked.

Practising morning routines

This year, I’m not seeing morning routines as an elaborate ritual, but as something that sets me up for a good work day as quickly and efficiently as possible. So far, I’m seeing that a simple routine of

• get out of bed
• brush teeth
• do skincare
• drink water
• drink coffee

is a good starting point — it freshens me up and gives me something to look forward to (coffee!), and it isn’t overwhelmingly long, which means I have a better chance of following through with it day after day.

Takeaway: How long and complex of a routine can you reasonably commit to replicating over time? Try different varieties and see what feels doable.

Preparing content assets

As I restart my freelance career, I want a solid set of assets that help me look professional and simplify the work process with clients. The assets I’m currently working on include

• A website
• A rate sheet
• Outlines for a set of long-form blogs for my website
• A proposal template
• A freelancer’s agreement

Naturally, they won’t all be done before the new year, but I’ve gotten a good start and plan to work on them some more before the 31st.

Takeaway: What are the core assets you need as the foundation for the next stage of your career? Build them with love and intention.

Dividing my day into blocks

In 2023, there are three main types of work I am going to be engaged in:

• Writing on Medium/Substack/my website blog
• Freelance work
• Fiction (short stories)

And after observing my productivity across different styles of work (Pomodoro, tag between simultaneous projects, to-do lists etc), I’ve decided that I want to have clear, sizeable blocks of time for each of these three with short breaks in between.

So far, I’ve seen that the best allocations are:

• Early morning — mind dumping for whatever ideas are playing around in my head
• Morning — freelance work
• Afternoon — freelance work/admin work
• Early evening — fiction
• Late evening/post-dinner — Medium/Substack/blog

This may change in special circumstances (i.e. I have an unexpectedly large volume of freelance work that takes all day), but overall, I plan to stick to this.

Takeaway: Different types of work call for different states of mind. Tune in to what your brain is telling you and give yourself slots of time to optimise each.

Tidying my workspace

ADHD folks, raise your hand if you haven’t tidied your room in decades. I’ve never been a neat freak — aesthetically, a little mess makes a room feel homier to me — but I’ve noticed that a cluttered desk tends to annoy me, however subtly, and build resistance towards sitting down and creating freely. My home office also happens to be where my clothing cupboard is, and for most of the year, it’s been less a cupboard than a random heap of crumpled clothes.

So I’m cleaning it all up, bit by bit, and creating simple systems that will help me stay tidy without too much stress. Clothes, for instance, are going into different baskets depending on whether they’re casual wear, gym wear or sleepwear. A few days ago I finished ironing and sorting my clothes, and it’s amazing how much better I feel when I open the cupboard door and see neat piles rather than a jumbled mess. Next on the list is my desk.

Takeaway: Clean up your workspace, bit by bit, however hard it feels. Start with one section, complete it, and let the pleasure of having done so carry over to other sections.

Writing out daily wins

I saw a freelancer post on LinkedIn about how she’d been keeping a spreadsheet of daily wins since January 2022 and how amazing it felt to scroll through the months and see how many things there were to be happy about. And while I’ve always struggled with traditional gratitude journalling, something about that just clicked for me.

So in 2023, I’m going to write out every little win, from successfully wrestling with a moment of inner doubt to giving myself permission to take a nap. I prefer to do it longhand — that way, at the end of the year, I have a little book of happy moments I can flip through.

Takeaway: Gratitude journaling can be hard when going through a rough patch. Instead, count the little things that went right. But count them punctiliously.

Drafting a LinkedIn content calendar

Many, many times I have tried to build a consistent presence on LinkedIn — and failed. And I see now that that was owing to my having no real strategy for what I was sharing.

One realisation that I came to, however, is that I don’t necessarily want to be a LinkedIn influencer — I want to use the platform primarily to attract clients for my freelance writing services, which means I need to write in a fashion that will appeal to those clients enough for them to DM me.

So I’m setting up:

• Clear content pillars
• A schedule for different categories of posts
• Post frameworks
• A repository of ideas I can tweak to fit into one of my pillars

The goal — to give readers a clear takeaway with each post, while letting my personality and tastes shine through. Everything else is redundant.

Takeaway: How do you want to be known on the social media platforms of your choice? Tailor your strategy to that vision, not to what influencers tell you to do to be like them.

Compiling fiction notes

I’m planning to write a minimum of ten new short stories in 2023. I have ideas for each of these, but no structure — and I’m a writer who absolutely must have structure when it comes to fiction (i.e. no ‘let’s randomly see where this goes’).

I can’t exactly control the inflow of ideas — they just happen, as any fiction writer will know. What I’m doing, however, is writing down each idea in my fiction notebook as it comes to me, rather than trying to remember it for later. I’m also using sticky notes to divide the notebook into sections for each story so that I have the material for each in one place. That way, when I have a writing session, I can just read through the notes and get into the ‘zone’ of the story without too much flipping back and forth.

Takeaway: Passion projects need structure too, even if they don’t bring you a cent!

Educating myself

In 2023, I want to learn about goal-setting, productivity and the science of how the brain works from the experts. I discovered the Huberman Lab podcast a few days ago and it’s excellent. I’ll be looking for another podcast on B2B writing and marketing (recommendations welcome!) and maybe one on fiction. That’s it, though — I don’t want to overwhelm myself.

Takeaway: Consume top-quality educational content in moderation. Reading is great, but listening can be fun too, especially as an accompaniment to things like chores.

Taking an actual holiday

I’ve been doing all this work on myself, but I’ve also been unplugging more than I have in years. Throughout December, I’ve spent most of my days lounging around, drinking wine, eating pasta, playing with my cats — all the things I love doing without agenda. I also just got back from a truly magnificent six days of hiking and camping in Death Valley.

I hadn’t even realised how overworked and burnt out I was until I did this. It was almost like a tonic I had to assign myself — do not work outside work hours. But now, I feel more refreshed than ever, and I am READY to work my hardest in 2023. And I’m going to be unplugging much more often from now on.

Takeaway: Give yourself a holiday, whether at home or somewhere else, and enjoy the heck out of it.

Bottom line —

If there’s one thing 2022 has taught me, it’s that none of my goals will come to life unless they’re backed by solid, sustained fuel.

Throughout December, that’s what I’ve been aiming to give myself. And I plan to keep doing that through 2023 as I progress, learn, fall back, recover, course-correct and win.

It’s been a rewarding month. I’m excited. Bring it on.