The best productivity hack is to be poorer than you used to be.

I've been an adult for more or less 9 years now, and it's been a bit of a wild ride.<br><br>In the first 8 years of my adulthood, I went from middle class to less than dirt poor, back up to upper-middle class, and then back down to being poor again. In the last 9 months, I've gone from a successful career working on a really cool project to homeless.<br><br>I've struggled my entire life with staying productive, which is why I'm on this chamber, trying to find more ways to be more productive.<br><br>However, when life forced me to go from being bottomless middle-class to being poor, I had to get more productive. Without a choice, I had to figure out how to make more with less, and it was a super valuable experience that I carry with me every day.<br><br>I used to get on a plane every other week (before COVID), and I was required to be on the road for months at a time serving my corporate overlords. I always in a hotel, and that hotel had a gym, a restaurant, a room, and a bunch of other things that made life a lot easier.<br><br>It was also really expensive, and my company would pay to have all of it done for me, which unfortunately is not the case most of the time. If I wanted to have all of these things, I had to pay for them myself, which was not in the cards.<br><br>I had to find a way to work out at home, which took up a lot of time. I had to start cooking, which took a lot of time. I had to figure out how to make money with less of a budget, and that took some time to figure out.<br><br>But the end result was a big jump in productivity. When I had to work twice as hard for the same things, I had to be a lot more intentional with how I was using my time, and I was a lot more successful because of it.<br><br>I was more focused. I was more productive. I ended up making a lot more money, because I knew that if I didn't, I was going to go hungry.<br><br>Life was better when I was poor.<br><br>Now, I've been homeless for a while, and that's an even more extreme version of this. I had to learn how to do everything again, but this time with almost zero resources. The first few months were a struggle, but I've fallen into a really good rhythm.<br><br>I'm more productive than ever. I'm more focused, more determined, and I'm doing better than I ever did when I was doing well.<br><br>The key to being more productive, imo, is to be less well off than you used to be. I think if you go from middle class or wealthy to being poor, you'll learn a lot about yourself.