The most important thing I’ve learned about productivity

The one key thing I’ve learned about my own productivity is that there is absolutely no correlation between how much energy I have and how productive I’m able to be. I have just as many productive days on days when I wake up with a migraine as I do on days that I wake up feeling great, and some of my least productive days are days in which I start out in great physical and mental shape. The only thing that seems to matter is whether or not I have a plan in place and I’m able to follow it. <br><br>The reason this distinction is important is that there’s a lot of advice from very productive people who say that taking care of your body is the most important thing to improve productivity, and for some people this is true. I’d love to be one of those people who can have more control over their energy levels because of the food they eat or their sleep schedule, but I’m not, and I think there are a lot of other people like me. By far the most important thing I’ve learned about myself in terms of improving my productivity has been that I cannot rely on my energy to drive my productivity. On the mornings when I wake up croaking like a frog, I could think “well, here comes another unproductive day!” But my experience has taught me that my energy levels don’t matter here. At this point, the only thing standing between me and a productive day are my ability to sit down and write out a daily schedule for myself and follow it.