How To Be Productive When You Are Super-Tired

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Here’s my quick productivity hack –

How to be productive when you are tired and unmotivated,

plus tips for how to stay consistently productive day-to-day!

If you love these tips, sign up to my email list to get your Free Weekly Planner Template!

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Sometimes we get tired and unmotivated, and it kills our productivity. 

Not gonna lie, working at home is the absolute best thing ever.  But in terms of getting and staying motivated, it can be the hardest place to work.

I am literally surrounded by all of the other important things I have to make time for.  It can start to feel overwhelming pretty fast.

Overwhelm to me feels heavy and sluggish, and totally drains my energy & motivation.

(My brain can even take control of my muscles and physically stop me from doing things.  I have literally walked to my computer to continue a project, then mindlessly turned around and walked to the fridge and opened it.  Don’t even know how I got there.)

Humans don’t inherently know how to be productive all the time.  We are wired to eat, sleep and make more humans, that’s pretty much it.   It takes energy and focus to stay on task and push away our short-term “wants.”

When I get unmotivated, I let things pile up, I focus on easy, unimportant tasks and my work suffers.

It happens to all of us once in a while.  Our focus just isn’t there.  That’s totally normal!

Today, though, I needed to snap out of it and get something important done, but my body just would not cooperate.

I had my head in my hands going WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?????  WHY AM I DOING THIS?  And then, a quick strategy popped into my head, that ended up pulling me out of my funk.  Out of nowhere.

It renewed my excitement about my goals and pushed the clouds & cobwebs in my brain away.  For now, anyway.

The best part is, it only took 1 minute.

It worked so well that I’m excited to tell you about it right now!

 

It’s my quick “productivity hack.”

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Here’s how to be productive, when you are totally unmotivated.

(This is a quick hack to find your focus and be more productive, when your brain and body aren’t cooperating.  Below this hack are some great steps to keep your productivity going and stay motivated.)

Do this for one minute:

Close your eyes, relax your facial muscles and visualize your ideal life.  What will our life look like once you have reached your goal?  Think about this:

1. What does your day look like?
2. What does your bank account look like?
3. Where is your money coming from? Visualize that place, and imagine the money coming toward you.  What are those places?  (Maybe it will spark a new idea or goal!)
4. What do your feelings feel like? Are you excited, or content?

 

As you open your eyes, the logical next steps in your day should start coming to you.  It will feel clearer what you need to do right now, to get a step or two closer to that place you went in your head.

The steps that come to you may be surprising, or may not have the textbook definition of “productive.”  But, it’s important to listen to your body.

It may be that your logical next step is something that isn’t specifically working on your goal.  It could be:

• write that email to the person you are nervous about contacting,
• sort through that pile of mail to get it off of your desk,
• grab your bills book and organize your payments, or
• finally try out Amazon Fresh to get groceries delivered to you, and off your to-do list.

 

Of course, it could totally be starting, continuing or finishing a project.  What’s great about this is that for me, the steps that jump into my head are really specific.  They are actionable.  Your mind wants you to succeed!  You are just giving it a minute to dust itself off and wake up!

Try it now!  See what steps come through!

Trust me, whatever it is, you will be dying to get it done!

By visualizing your ideal where-you-want-to-be, you are snapping yourself back into your reality.  You are giving yourself a bit of a path.  And, it’s a path you are already super-happy to take!

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How to be more productive, long-term – Motivation is key!

I’m super proud of you.  You have your eyes on the prize, and you’ve knocked out one or two move-forward steps to get there.

Now let’s keep that momentum going!

This isn’t super-easy.  Sometimes I can’t believe how many directions working moms get pulled in every day!

To make it easier on ourselves each time we sit down to work, we need to motivate, prep and plan:

Here’s how to be more productive in general, in our day-to-day lives:

 

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How To Be Productive: Motivate

Remember that ideal picture you manifested in your head? Write it down!

Vision boards are great for this because nobody knows what they mean but you.  You can have a collage on your wall or in your closet of the most random things.  Together, they represent your vision for your future.

If you don’t want to explain yourself but anyone asks, tell them it’s a mixed-media art project!  Then tell them to get out of your closet.

You can even find a little picture or trinket that reminds you of that goal you are working towards.  Keep it in your desk to pull out whenever you are feeling unmotivated.

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How To Be Productive: Prep

 

I’m not a fan of prepping (like pre-cooking) entire meals, but if you don’t meal prep anything else, prep some healthy snacks in your fridge.

• Cut-up vegetables & hummus or nut butter
• cheese sticks
• pre-portioned whole grain crackers
• a yogurt pack
• pre-washed berries, raisins
• a banana or apple

The less you need to do to get the snack into your face, the better.

 

I actually recently purchased this crock pot and jumped onto The Family Freezer’s email list.  She sends her subscribers an AVALANCHE of recipes!  The ingredients all toss into a freezer bag.  You thaw, dump and push like 2 buttons.

I tried her Red Pepper Chicken recipe. It was great and I had leftover shredded chicken for a few days! Chicken for tacos & salads, my hubby even ate it and he hates crock pot food.

 

Meal prepping isn’t the only way to prepare yourself for your awesome productivity-filled day.  Having a real, plain-English, practical reason for doing what you do goes a long way toward sharpening your focus.  This video from Tim Challies is short and to the point.  He lays out 3 mindset-changing productivity tips that keep your goal path straight & clear.

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How To Be Productive: Plan

Have a productivity planner – Erin Condren  & Passion Planner are my faves!  You can checkout my Erin Condren LifePlanner review here.

Here’s my post on how to plan your workweek to be productive.  It comes with a free weekly planner template!

No matter what, it’s good to have a perfectly-imperfect schedule in place.  It does NOT have to be set in stone, especially if you have kids.  My days usually go out the window, but if I don’t at least have an idea of what should be doing, what could possibly get done?

A big part of planning is managing expectations.  I’m on this #girlboss Brittany Berger’s email list.  Her emails focus on managing expectations and standing in our truths about how much time we have vs. how much work we give ourselves.  She’s all about time audits (tracking time) and being realistic when we plan out our work schedule.  I wish she wrote more blog posts on the subject!

Use a timer.  I’m using one right now!  If I try to reach for my phone to distract myself, my timer is the first thing I see.  I immediately shift back to my project.  And, also feel annoyed that I was going to reach for my phone in the first place.

Check out this video by Suzi Whitford, I love her sticky notes time management system.  This is ultimate flexibility, moving the stickies around is easy (and fun):

 

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Here are some more quick productivity tips:

• Listen to your body – maybe you really are tired! I’ve heard good things about caffeine naps!
• Eat any green vegetable. Take your pick.  You just got one of your vegetable servings out of the way!  How productive is that!?
• Pretend you are somebody else. This one works for me!  I don’t have a boss.  But, if I pretend for a minute that I do and the boss is going to be pissed, I can bang out 5 more minutes of work.  Sometimes I can stay motivated and stretch it to a half hour!
• Keep a few things in reach that can take your focus away for a minute or two, no longer. Here are some ideas:
  • I like to schedule snack times. If I leave “fridge time” to chance, I abuse it.  If I sprinkle a few snack breaks in my day, I know I’ll get some veggies in.
  • Drink a LOT of water. Built-in potty breaks!
  • Tiny minute-to-win-it games. If you’ve ever been to Cracker Barrel on a road trip, you know what I’m talking about.  Their table-top peg game takes 30 seconds and is a great distraction.

• Keep away from the things you KNOW will take your focus away for long periods of time. For me, that means my internet explorer/email home pages.  Those news feeds are like Facebook & Instagram to me – I can’t not scroll.  I need to stay away or 45 minutes will disappear from my life.

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Conclusion:

We all get stuck in a rut once in a while.  No one is motivated to be productive 100% of the time.  But with this simple visualization hack, we can train our brains how to be productive!

Do you have an action-plan, or any ideas for how to get out of an unproductive slump?  Let us know in the comments below, we can all learn from each other!

 

XO,

 

-Mina

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P.S.: Here are some of my other blog posts you might find useful!

-How to Plan your Work Week to be Productive + Weekly Planner Template!

-How to Use a Planner to Organize Your Life

-7 Super-Healthy WFH Office Habits to Keep You Productive

 

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