The #5 reasons that stop you being productive

You are your own worst enemy!

What crazy times we’re living through! Being put into solitary confinement, not being free to do what we want. Thank you, COVID-19! (but it’s for our own good so we should stick with it). Not only is our health being attacked at this time, but arguably more our incomes. However, there is one thing that we are gaining… our long-lost time.

What a great time to start a project, be productive, and maybe even start your online career (just like me).

But quickly we discover that it’s a lot harder than we thought.

Do you remember having a ‘bright idea’ lately? You know those ideas that spontaneously happen around a few drinks and laughs, (when we still could go for a drink or two). Or the ones that happen on our daily (government-approved) walks in parks. What happens to those great ideas? Why don’t they ever take off? Well, my theory is that we are our own worst enemy.

We have this conscious and subconscious habit of shooting ourselves down. I put this down to 5 reasons, that I observed in myself and my friends.

This article is going to be broken down into 5 sections, each examining a reason as to why we are not profiting from our thoughts/ideas, and what we can do to fix them.

• #1 The fear of taking risks
• #2 Overthinking
• #3 Being overwhelmed
• #4 Lack of drive
• #5 Lack of patients

No1) The fear of taking risks — we might have thought of the greatest idea in the world, but if we are too afraid of taking the risk, taking that step into the unknown. We can never reap the rewards. Though fear is a great way to keep us alive and well, it also limits our experiences.

To put it into perspective, I’ve been planning on writing a book about my 1-year adventure in China for about 5 years now.

Why haven’t I written it? Hopefully, it is not through a lack of funny, interesting, and educational stories. I’m just afraid to take the risk into the unknown. I ask myself, “who’s going to read it?”, “Is it going to get published?” or “is what I’m writing even interesting?”.

I’ve never written a book before. I try to hide behind excuses like; I don’t have time or I’m still planning it.

But the truth is I’m afraid of taking that risk. If I don’t have time, I can make time. If I spend too long planning, then nothing is going to get done. Planning is only there to help you start. I bet we all have ideas of starting something but are just too afraid of failure.

Because we are so afraid of failure, that we fail to do anything. Though this fear is understandable; I still fear losing my time, my energy, and my ego, if it all falls apart.

So, the best advice I give myself day in day out (like a crazy person); a step into the unknown, is a step into possibilities. You can’t succeed if you don’t try. So, it’s simple; try! and if you fail… learn from it. There is nothing scary about learning and gaining a little knowledge.

No2) Overthinking (self-put downs) — Oh man! I try saying that I don’t do this, but I’m so guilty of it. No matter how great my idea might be… I destroy it! Most of my ideas don’t make it past the concept board, they just get criticised to oblivion by me. And I’m willing to bet that we all do the same.

I’m sure that it’s linked to our fear of risk, fear of failure, and fear of what others may think. But it’s all just in our heads. For that very reason, we also hold the key. I found that when I keep things simple, take small and steady steps, they accumulate to become big things.

As soon as I have an idea, I jump on it, not letting myself overthink it. The quicker I can try it out for real the more likely it is to become something real. Not just a thought that passes through my head.

Don’t give yourself too much time to overthink it. The sooner you can get started on your ideas, the greater the momentum you can gather. It is far better to be solving the problems that may come up than to be endlessly planning for them.

No3) Being overwhelmed — this one is a bit weird, I found throughout my life, that people have a habit of over-complicating things and as a result, there is a lot of information out there for us to get our heads around. To give you an example, a few years ago I wanted to start my very own distillery (alcohol distillery).

I was very keen on the idea, so I brought as many books as I could, and read all of them. But! the more I read, the more muddled I became. It wasn’t so much the process of making the alcohol, but on choosing what type I should make. I would keep asking myself, what would sell well? What are the government rules and taxes? And so on.

Before I even started, I had lost heart in the idea. I find it is way too easy nowadays to get overwhelmed by almost unlimited access to information and options.

Though this information should serve to enlighten, I found it to cripple me instead. The older I get, the more I realised the value of focusing on one step at a time. As the famous quote goes;

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”.

Keep it simple, start at the beginning and make your way forwards. Don’t look at the issues of a big-time business or the finished product. Just look at the fundamentals, and build up.

Worry about the big things, when they are big.

No4) Lacking the drive — what a dangerous habit to develop. The amount of times I’ve said, “Oh! That’s a great idea. I’ll make a start on it tomorrow.” It never even gets started. Usually when I say, “I’ll do it tomorrow”, what it really means is; it’ll be lucky if it’s done in a year, or a decade, or if ever.

A great idea tomorrow is a poor idea today.

I recently re-watched Rocky (not sure which one it was, it was the one that had Apollo train Rocky) and there’s one quote in particular which Apollo says to rocky, as he’s about to give up; “there is no tomorrow”.

What a powerful quote, every time I think about putting things off, I just imagine Apollo shouting at me “THERE IS NO TOMORROW!”.

I try to act like today is my only chance at whatever I want to achieve. Tomorrow, I won’t be able to do it, so I must do it today. This thought process has helped me so much, in improving my productivity and achieving my goals.

No5) We lack patients — this is probably one of my worst qualities and one that has taken me the longest to work on (and it’s still a work in progress). I found that more and more, as our world moves towards the world of tomorrow; we are developing an attitude of; I want things to have been done yesterday.

I as well as many of my friends want things to happen almost instantaneously.

A recent example of this happening to me transpired a few days ago. I was having a casual chat with a friend over Skype. He wanted to share an article with me, so he sent it over to me in an email. It just so happened for whatever reason, not to have been delivered instantly, it took a whole 2 mins before it popped through into my inbox.

Oh man, was I annoyed! I had to wait for over 2 mins?! Bearing in mind that my friend happens to be living in Hong Kong. In the olden days, for his message to get to me would have taken weeks, if not months, and I would have been fine with that. But today! Oh, hell no!

The more we stress with things having to be done “now!” the less actually gets done. We tend to lose interest too quickly and too often we forget; the quicker we get something, the quicker we lose it. There is value in being patient and building things too last.

As Einstein discovered time is relative, if we just slow down and start to enjoy what we do, time becomes less of a concern. I found that things tend to happen quicker when I do them that way.

To quote Einstein.

“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, it seems longer than an hour. That’s relativity.”

To summarise:

• 1 The fear of taking risks — You can’t succeed if you are afraid to try.
• 2 Overthinking — Don’t give yourself too much time to overthink it, just get stuck into it.
• 3 Being overwhelmed — Keep it simple, worry about the big things, when they are big.
• 4 Lack of drive — “THERE IS NO TOMORROW!” (In Rocky, Spoken by Apollo)
• 5 Lack of patients — The quicker we get something, the quicker we lose it. There is value in being patient and building things too last.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me an email.