A YouTube clip from Joe Rogan’s podcast got me thinking a lot. In this clip, along with Firas Zahabi, who has specialized in a lot of workout and training topics, the topic of productivity is discussed. “I am a big believer of never being sore”.
Link to YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbCcWyYthQ&t=137s
Let’s analyze what he said a little bit more. What does it mean to be sore? Surely, we can think of being sore as something related to a hard workout. Being sore, then, is just being tired, being worn out. Say we worked on a task the whole day. By the end of the day, we are going to be sore, tired, and unmotivated to keep going.
The way our energy levels work present to us the need for there to be rest. Without rest, our bodies will not function properly. Our productivity, then, is measured by how much work we can do when we are not resting. Our rest can either make or break the amount of work we can handle.
Resting will increase your productivity, even though it might seem that rest takes away time from that productivity. Zahibi’s concept of not being sore is similar to that of choosing to jog rather than run. When we run we end up being tired faster, causing an unsteady progress. We run hard, but we have to rest just as hard. However, when we jog, we can keep going for more time. Some tasks are way longer and harder than others so we must learn to know when to sprint and when to jog. Bigger tasks, bigger goals, require a lot of time and effort. This time and effort must be maximised, especially for long runs. In a marathon, we don’t just use up all our energy at once. We have to keep it slow and steady for the endurance. The same applies for various things in life. If you want to get anywhere with your goals, the smart thing to do is to go slowly and work your way up.
So, compiling all this information and analyzing what some of the big influential people have to say, here is some of the ways to maximise productivity forever and become a beast at tackling goals:
Do not burn out
The Elon Musk mentality of burning yourself out and working as hard as possible all the time is not optimal. Sure, some of us can actually handle a lot of work, but it takes a lot of time and discipline to get to that point. To achieve the amount of work Elon Musk can get done, one must start with baby steps. In order to actually get to long term goals, one cannot simply start racing as soon as he can, or the result might be burn out.
One step at a time
I really like what Zahibi explained in this Youtube clip. He says that in the long run, doing small tasks each day can achieve more than tackling something all at once and needing to rest. The analogy is that if he does a small amount of push ups, he can be consistent and keep doing that throughout the whole week. On the other hand, if someone does a big amount of push ups and ends up sore, he must need to rest, and in that time he will lose relative productivity. The same applies to life in general, but also because it is the baby steps and manageable chunks of work that will actually stick long term and generate good habits.
Plan ahead always
In relation to our goals, it is very smart to have a plan, some sort of strategy to tackle problems or obstacles. Without a plan, it is very hard to keep being consistent or to track any progress at all. A plan takes away some of that stress, because if you know your goal and you know how you are getting there, there is less to worry about.
Consider the Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro technique is very simple, and it might be the difference between getting a lot of work done and not being very productive at all. It works because the way our brain works. When we are working hard, we are in a focused mode and our brain is trying to remember and take information from as many sources as possible. In other words, we become aware of other experiences and use our memories as potential leadway into problem solving. However, it is pretty hard sometimes to make connections when there are too many sources of information. In our relaxed state, we can often find connections we have not made before. The pomodoro technique not only exploits this, but it makes it easy to handle big tasks, by allowing little breaks in between twenty minute sessions of working.
So, as long as you take it slow and know where you are heading, getting there is not as hard and it is by far the smartest way to get work done.
The Weekend Read 