Recently I’ve been thinking about productivity and what works to motivate me. My meta-goal is to get disciplined so that I can make steady progress toward goals like becoming stronger, writing more, coding better, building a successful side project.

In the last year I’ve had some success with working out more, and reflecting on what worked it’s clear that workout plans have been good for a few reasons.

  • They allow me to focus on the work of training rather than planning to train

  • It has built-in progression to help you reach the end goal (e.g. running a marathon)

  • They end

Focus on the Work

A good plan allows me to focus on being an athlete instead of being an athlete and coach. Planning a new workout every day is taxing. My model for this is Obama’s habit of wearing either a blue or gray suit every day to reduce decision fatigue.

Built in progression

This is similar to the ‘focus on the work’ point above. You shouldn’t need to become an expert on running in order to accomplish a challenging goal like running a marathon. Get a good plan, perhaps one that friends or redditors seem to like, and you know it will take you from point A to point B if you follow it. Other humans have taken this path before you. If you want to get to a destination, you’re probably better off taking a road rather than setting off into the bushes to figure it out yourself. I hear a small voice saying there’s some value to making your own way and reasoning it out from first principles, but I’d say that if you want to get where others have gone before (like running a marathon) it makes sense to follow the plan. If you’re looking to achieve a new result, then the first-principles approach could make more sense.

A plan ends

The idea of studying a language for 10 minutes every day or running every day of my life, while inspiring, has never provided lasting motivation for me. Those bouts of resolve usually last a couple days, and then as soon as I miss a day I feel like I’ve failed and give up.1 A big part of the challenge for me is the lack of an end. Running every day for a month seems like an achievable challenge, but running every day for the rest of my life is so daunting it sets me up to fail. This is like the macro-scale version of a pomodoro timer: the theory behind pomodoro being that endless periods of work aren’t as effective as focused chunks with dedicated breaks. Maybe the same applies to longer periods of activity!

  1. There is a productivity method called “Don’t break the chain” to build a daily habit by marking a calendar every day you achieve your goal. Maybe there’s some magic in the analog marking of the calendar. Could be worth a try. ↩