I’ve struggled with productivity for quite some time now. Maybe it’s the fact that for most of my academic life, i’ve been able to slack off, procrastinate, and still get assignments done in a satisfactory manner. But I know one day, that will no longer be the case. Once day, I’ll be bottlenecked not by my intellectual capability but rather my inability to get things done; but instead of correcting the habit, I’ll fall into an even deeper pit of procrastination and escapism, until all my intellect is gone as well. So to prevent that from happening, here’s a chance for me to reflect on my struggle with productivity—what’s worked for me, what hasn’t, and why.
Parental pressure
I believe that, although we teenagers always push back against it, and although we should all strive to internalize productivity and rely less on external influence, parental pressure is a necessary evil that keeps us on track while we’re still learning. It’s like asking a teenager learning to ride a bike for the first time still to use training wheels; they’ll find it demeaning, yet without the training wheels, they’d fall off the bike and never learn to ride properly. Similarly, we often dismiss our parents’ advice as useless and demeaning: either obvious to the point of pointlessness—“sleep early,” “stretch and exercise”—or unnecessary—“take regular breaks from the screen,” “go out for walks.” It feels as though they’re just saying things you already know, and so whether or not they’re said shouldn’t make any difference.
But once they stop saying these things and the training wheels come off, you discover just how easily you can slip and fall. When my parents stopped caring so much about my sleep schedule, I pushed bedtime back by a harmless 15 minutes. Then another 15. Then another, then another, then another, then another. I went from sleeping before 10:30 to sleeping after 12:00, yet I certainly haven’t gotten 90 minutes more productive. In fact, I’m sure even now, I could comfortably get everything done, have an hour or two of free time to myself, and still sleep before 11:00. But why does removing parental pressure make such a big difference? I know I should sleep early, and whether my parents echo that same truth to me night after night shouldn’t make me believe it any more or any less.
But there’s a difference between knowing something is true and really internalizing why. I know that I should be productive, but if I haven’t internalized why, I’ll always find a way to justify taking a break here, then another there, then another…unless regulated by an external force.
Truly internalizing ideas requires strong stimuli that may vary from person to person and idea to idea—but a common one for me is consequence. For instance, internalizing why I should stretch and strengthen required me to first suffer a consequence for not doing so: a knee injury. Similarly, I learned to better communicate and criticize in friendship after not doing so ruined one. Other possible stimuli are scientific research—like knowing why certain foods are unhealthy—or moral conviction, but I find consequence the most potent.
But if we learn best by consequence, shouldn’t our parents let us roam free and learn purely from our own mistakes? No, because our doses of consequences must be controlled. For instance, say your procrastination causes you to fail one test, then another, then another. While this may help you internalize the fact that you should study more, the academic cost of such egregious failures outweighs the benefit of any lessons learned. Instead of learning to study for the next test, you may instead deem your grade irredeemable and give up on the next exam altogether. Similarly, you may notice heightened discomfort and fatigue once you start to sleep later, but these downsides alone may not generate sufficient corrective force. Although “learning from your mistakes” does have its merits, taking this philosophy to its extreme does more harm than good.
Thus, to internalize a maxim, we need parental pressure light enough to ensure we can still experience some consequences of disobedience, but strong enough to steer us away from going completely off course.
Internalizing productivity
Parental pressure has helped me internalize productive habits by creating the following feedback loop: I procrastinate and procrastinate a task until my parents remind me to do it; thankfully, these reminders usually still give me enough time to complete the task properly. However, I then realize that if they had said nothing, the task would have never been finished (at least, to a satisfactory degree) and I would have suffered grave consequences. This realization then triggers fear that my success has grown too dependent on external assistance, so I resolve to procrastinate less the next time around.
In parallel, I’ve also grown better at projecting possible actions into the future and grasping the true weight of their consequences. Since I’ve never failed gravely nor know anyone else who has, it always seemed to me that even if I made a bad decision in the short run, everything would work out in the short run. But I’d fallen victim to survivor bias, and recognizing this delusion has helped deepen my fear of failure and strengthen the feedback loop.
I find this loop effective because it offers me enough help to escape deadlines unscathed, but till leaves me enough autonomy to feel the weight of the consequences that would have been. Thus, it allows me to reap the tactile benefits of “learning by mistake” while still avoiding the worst outcomes.
My system, and how to (not) use Todoist
Once you’ve internalized the importance of self-driven productivity, it’s time to set up a system to keep yourself focused. My most important tenet for building this system: minimize your reliance on tools outside of your own mind. Retrain your subconscious to automatically remind you of important, pressing tasks. You’ll initially have to make conscious efforts at recall, but each retrieval will bring deadlines closer and closer to the forefront of your mind, until thinking and planning about them becomes second nature.
As such, I refrain from using Todoist for both highly important tasks (college essays) and also daily tasks (journaling), as I want my mind to recall these on its own.
However, since I don’t yet fully trust my mind’s ability to do this effectively, I still record my most critical tasks in Todoist as a failsafe—but before opening the app, I try to actively recall as many of these tasks as I can before checking for any I missed.
Ideally, the only tasks that end up in Todoist are small, easy-to-forget tasks like printing out DMV documents, or some self-imposed tasks where I dictate the deadline, like writing a certain blog entry.
Location-based work
It also helps to compartmentalize tasks by location. For instance, I try to finish all my schoolwork at school, and save personal endeavors for home. Splitting tasks in this way gives you a concrete deadline—“I have to finish all my homework before I leave school at 5:00”—and although you could set deadlines for yourself at home, they lack the rigidity possessed by a physical movement from one location to another.