The 8 Best Tips on How to Really Boost Productivity
Put an end to unproductive habits with these key insights
A fake reader who I completely made up, Ben Gabengo, writes:
“Dr. Bonanno. Thanks for your article on how to read books. Since I’ve been reading more, however, I find that I’ve also been less productive. How can I get more done?”
Thanks for your question, Ben. Everyone already knows that multitasking, checking your phone compulsively, and going down YouTube rabbit holes will significantly boost your productivity.
In this article, I’ll give you some more pointers on how to really get things done. Let’s get started.
1) Live in your email inbox
Are you like 99.9% of people who must check your email as part of their daily work routine? Well, I have a tip for you. Simply live day to day and do your best to answer emails as they immediately come into your inbox. Don’t process them in batch during set time periods during the day. Remember that your competence (and worth as a human being) depends ultimately on how quickly you can a) respond to emails and b) drain your inbox.
2) Write long emails
Related to #1, it is important to always and consistently write long emails. If you’re writing one-sentence emails, just cut it out, OK. I seriously want to take whatever you could tell me in one sentence and turn it into twenty sentences. We all know that the #1 thing people go back to read is that 3,000-word email you wrote last December. Let it be known that the real key to making friends and influencing people is to overwhelm them with more information than they could ever possibly handle. As an added bonus, I recommend including a bunch of confusing formatting in your emails to make them even more difficult to process (lots of highlighting, underlining, bold formatting, etc.). Essentially, you want to use as much formatting as necessary to ensure that nothing is emphasized because everything is emphasized.
You’ll know you’ve been a success here when you hear people down the hall weeping aloud as they re-read your email for the hundredth time. You want your email to be so long and intimidating to read that it sits in your recipient’s inbox for at least two weeks. Overall, this tip really concerns how to become more productive by making other people less productive. Sometimes, more is less.
3) Get into disputes online
Again, similar to writing unnecessarily long emails, we know that people frequently return to that one social media post you made six years ago where you totally destroyed your opponent. Sure, you neglected your crying baby in the other room while you wrote your ten-paragraph rebuttal. But you made a work of fine art sure to last for generations to come.
4) Ignore clocks and other unhelpful means for managing your time
I can’t imagine anything worse than someone saying simply, “I’ll do the best I can to write 500 words in exactly 60 minutes.” Nah. It would be far better for this hypothetical person to write a single book in one sitting. It happens, you know, every now and then. Setting time limits for myself (a la the Pomodoro technique) has never helped me manage my time.
5) Shift contexts as much as you can
If you’re writing a proposal, it is best to randomly interrupt yourself and start looking up Christmas gifts. After you’ve looked at Christmas gifts for two minutes, go fold laundry. Next, walk into your kitchen and turn on a boiling pot of hot water. Then go back to writing your proposal. But before you type anything into that proposal of yours, you should probably look up a Christmas gift or two. Don’t forget about your pot of boiling water.
6) Stop sleeping
Sleeping is a catastrophic waste of time. Out of bed, you lazy bum.
7) Stop eating (or, at least, eat poorly)
Like sleeping, you’re not really getting anything done when you’re eating. Now that we have IV fluids and modern means for “feeding” ourselves, traditional food (meaning the stuff you have to chew and swallow) has become optional. But, if you’re going to be stubborn and insist upon eating, you might as well eat only foods that make you sleepy and sad (try refined sugars/processed food).
8) Read more existential quizzes
Backed by my 100% Productivity Guarantee, my existential quizzes are manufactured to the highest quality standard to ensure that you question the meaning of your existence and quadruple your productivity.
Thanks for reading. If you liked this article, you might also like “Peg’s Leg,” my fictional tale of a lady’s adventure through medical bureaucracy.
