Published by Leonardo Calcagno
Want to be more productive? Beware of these deceptively unproductive words and activities. Want to be more productive? Here’s a quick, three-step experiment. First, think of your busiest day over the last week or so. Second, jot down two or three words that describe what you did that day. Finally, ask yourself a question: Did each of those activities lead directly to an outcome you wanted to achieve?
Nobody is productive all the time. We all spend time at work socializing, laughing, surfing the Internet, or maybe even worrying and daydreaming. That’s okay. We’re human beings, not machines, and we need to do things like that. Moreover, if you’re not as productive as you’d like to be, these kinds of activities probably aren’t the real problem.
Instead, the true productivity destroyers are the activities that you think get you closer to your goals, but that are actually timesucks in disguise. They’re tricky–sometimes because they’re things that we do in fact need to do in moderation, or because they’re deceptively related to more productive activities.
Here are seven of the most dangerous among them. Were any of these words on your list?
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