The Motivation Trap

Take a good look at your life, and the goals you have set, and find out that sweet spot, the threshold of success that you think is ‘enough’ for you to feel productive and successful.

Example: At Google, projects have multiple objectives but instead of an all-or-nothing situation, they...

We are not a factory pumping out products. Our constant switching of context, and checking our smartphone notifications/email has a huge impact on our productivity, focus and our ability to get things done. We are rarely productive in the real sense but feel productive doing pseu...

There are four elements that need to be done as a ritual to disconnect from work:

1. Create a shutdown ritual each evening.
2. Physically separate from your laptop and/or smartphone if possible.
3. Take some time to relax and reflect on the day, just with yourself.
4. ...

• Personal productivity is not about all-round efficiency, and it is wrong to think about your input as that of a machine in a factory unit.
• This is further complicated by our mistaken assumption that being in demand means that we are doing a splendid job.
• W...

Our brain starts to favour small tasks that give a false impression of productivity (woohoo! I just sent out fifty emails!) while we neglect the large, complex but meaningful tasks.

This is known as the completion bias.

Getting Things Done is a productivity system that helps us capture our work in one place and manage where our attention is going to be. The five steps of GTD are:

1. Capturing one’s ideas in a tool which is an app of your choice.
2. Clarifying each task to its next most easy step ...

If we don’t see enough progress by the end of the day, it feels (to us or our superiors) like we haven’t done enough.

Apart from the completion bias, where our brain seems hardwired to wanting to finish the given tasks, we are also having another cognitive bias called the plan...