3 Lessons

I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern in my own behavior when I read emails/newsletters.

I adore stories.
I love entertainment.
I love it when people don’t give a fuck about complicated formatting, bullets and all the other fancy shit.

Not gonna lie though…

One type of email stands head and shoulders above all:

X Lessons/Questions/Insights about Y

Damn I enjoy these.

Dopamine spiking on every point.

The novelty and insights you gain can make you stop and think for a second (which is incredibly rare for ANY piece of online content, no matter on which platform you look).

Best of all?

11 out of 12 insights/tips/hacks can be absolute garbage, something you’d only find in the most braindead subreddits and quora forums in the deep dark void of the internet - it doesn’t matter.

If there’s even ONE good insight you gain from this type of email, it was already worth consuming.

Not to mention, it makes it easier to take action on that one thing- but anyway.

So why not ping out one of these myself.

Here come 3 insights I rediscovered about productivity that I dug up looking at age-old notes:

1. Enjoy productive procrastination

“Productive Procrastination” refers to activities that feel productive, but aren’t lever-moving for you.

Think of the times you devoured YouTube videos for a few hours, trying to find the perfect productivity system to get more work done (while you’re actually just enjoying the constant dopamine hits blasting your neurons harder than actually working ever could).

For serious overthinkers like yours truly, things like overplanning, dreaming about the future, and obsessively detailed goal-setting can lead to a fuck ton of time spent.

Here’s the thing:

If you’re already “more advanced” in productivity (whatever that actually means), over time, you train yourself to completely stop this type of “half-work.”

You try to maximize your time spent efficiently, and stuff like YouTube research, planning, or whatever else you used to genuinely enjoy falls flat in your routine.

In itself, this change isn’t bad.

But it leads to a problem—you start feeling guilty about spending even the smallest amount of time not “doing work.”

Step by step you fall into the mindset of trying to squeeze the absolute maximum out of every hour you have.

Feeling massive guilt flood your system, imagining other people getting miles ahead for every second you don’t actually work on the most important task lying around.

No downtime. No rest. No “enjoyment”.

I’ve been there before. And I’ve preached about how important it is to make the most out of your days.

And this is quite obviously still true.

But look at it this way: Productive procrastination is still better than indulging in bad habits. I’d take a one-hour journaling session over scrolling social media every day of the week.

I’m not saying you should actively incorporate YouTube binge-watching sessions into your day.

But if you find yourself needing a break, don’t beat yourself up for starting to overplan, watch some educational content or clean out your email inbox.

Find some childish joy in that half-productive downtime.

2. It’s all your choice

Everything we do, we choose to do.

Like common, that’s pretty common sense.

If you take productive procrastination from lesson 1 as an example, it’s ok to take breaks, of course it is.

But it’s your choice to do so.

Just as it is your choice to get distracted.

To start scrolling on your phone instead of doing something else.

To get absolutely nothing done in a day and end up feeling like shit when you go to sleep an hour too late because the social media algorithms are so meticulously well designed to keep you hooked for hours on end without you even realizing it.

But it’s your choice to get hooked in the first place.

You get distracted by notifications? Choose to turn them off.

You don’t want to hit the gym? Choose to pack your bag and go.

You can’t get yourself to start working? Choose to start anyway.

Reframing your entire life as something in your control, deciding to see your day as nothing more but infinite choices you make…

That’s power.

It’s power because you can simply decide what you’ll be going to do, and you’ll decide if you’re going to pull through with your plans.

I think it’s all a mind game in the end. Just choose to make your day go well. It’s in your control.

3. Don’t run into walls

Charging head-first into brick walls hurts.

Pretty sure that applies to the literal sense as well.

But if you’ve ever encountered a serious problem you, just for the love of god himself, couldn’t solve after sitting on it for hours on end—you’ll know exactly what it feels like trying to push away an immovable object.

In those situations, the best thing I’ve found to work is pretty cliche, but then again, most cliches are cliches because they simply work.

So just fuck that problem for a second.

Go for a walk. Start working on something completely unrelated. Destroy your legs in the gym for an hour.

The problem is going to still be there. You’re not going to solve it by avoiding it.

But more often than not, all you need is a shift in perspective, something you won’t achieve by brooding over the problem for another hour while letting doubts about your work seep into your system, infecting both your mood and your productivity.

And when you return to your brick wall?

You’ll most likely be far better equipped than before to smash it into literal pieces. Another tip in there: Try to identify sub-problems and solve them one by one—it’s way easier to start small.

Well. Hope you enjoyed the three little insights I dug up.

If you did, let me know- I’ll make sure to write more of em.

See you soon,

Henri