Photo by yveslorson

True productivity is often painted as perfect, highly ordered, hierarchical and clean. The ideal system is polished and clinical, rules are followed and the productive person is all things to all people.

In my experience, this sanitized ideal is incompatible with ruthless effectiveness. True productivity is messy and imperfect. It requires mistakes and small sacrifices, elimination and survival of only the most useful actions. Sometimes the quickest, roughest solution is more effective than the right one, and some rules are meant to be broken.

You don’t need to mow down tasks like an unstoppable machine. You just need to stop doing things that don’t matter.

Even if it gets a little messy sometimes.

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