How Baby Steps Improved My Productivity

For the past 2–3 months, this has been my ‘productive’ workflow

1. Open my laptop
2. Make a schedule on Google Calendar and make sure everything was colored
3. Visualize an unrealistic result of what I wanted accomplished today
4. Realize that it’s too much to handle
5. Go on Social Media for “just 5 minutes” (which of course ended up 1–2 hours)
6. Decide that today’s not a right day to work on my business.
7. Spend the rest of the day on Social Media (thinking that I’m productive)

Obviously, you should never copy this workflow.

My biggest mistake was that it took me WAY too long to solve this problem of procrastination. Interestingly, it only took 5–10 minutes of reflecting on my journal to figure out the cause of this issue.

The solution was right under my nose the entire time… and it’s been something I’ve always been using when managing my tasks in school.

Having a plan of action

It’s as simple as knowing what steps 1–3 of ‘uploading a video’ or ‘researching an article’, then jotting them down on a checklist.

What I needed was to go into extreme detail.

Here’s an example of what I would put in my to-do list:

1. Open Spotify
2. Play ‘Flow State’ playlist
3. Put all the tasks I need to do today
4. Say “let’s do this”

As you can see, the list was so detailed, as if I was programming myself as a robot who just experienced the real world.

I think that this level of detail allows me to get started and get going. The momentum is important for productivity as it tricks my brain into thinking… “I’m making progress.” And it works!

There’s virtually no excuse as to why I can’t get things done, since I know EXACTLY what to do next.

With clarity, there’s more control. By knowing what I am expected to do every step of the way, I get to release a sigh of relief as I know I’m doing what’s important — instead of succumbing to distractions.

The reason why I would freeze and escape to Social Media was because:

I didn’t know how to start

I was too focused on the end-goal and assuming that I would miraculously end up there by just messing around.

So, the next time you notice you’re running away from a task.

Take a deep breath, a pen and paper — then write down in detail your next baby steps.