Productivity usually refers to getting more work done with the time we have.
Sometimes, the key to improving productivity involves "productivity hacks" or systems, like to-do lists or the Pomodoro technique. It's also common to struggle with productivity challenges in the mind, such as low conscientiousness, dealing with distractions, or boredom.
Conscientiousness is one of the Big Five personality traits and refers to the ability to do a task well, with diligence and with care.
When you have to work but want to play a game instead, you have two impulses aimed in opposite directions. One is something you want to do, whereas the other is what you don't want to do. If you have high conscientiousness, you are able to choose the thing you don't want to do. If you have low conscientiousness, you have a harder time not giving in and just doing what you want.
Yes! It's possible to increase your conscientiousness.[1] One way to do this is practicing kindness, empathy, and generosity as a means of learning to do things that you may or may not want to do. This can increase conscientiousness by training your mind to do something regardless of desires or benefits to self. For example, when you share half of something with someone, you lose half of it. If your friend is sick and you take out the time to make soup for them, then you lose the time spent gaming.
But isn’t that empathy?
Not necessarily. Empathy is the capacity to feel what someone else is feeling. People who are naturally empathic are naturally more helpful towards other people.
This practice is about setting aside your personal impulse ("what I want" or even "what is good for me") and doing something else instead. By practicing kindness, you'll more often require yourself to set aside the impulse and be deliberate about what is beneficial for someone else.
If you have a more agreeable (or empathetic or people-pleasing) personality, this practice may not work as well for you and may even contribute to self-sacrificing and a lack of protecting your boundaries. Be careful about the impulse of putting others first as well. Instead, practice awareness of any impulse and prioritize deliberate choices, regardless of if it helps yourself or someone else more.
When you do something for someone else, you literally have to set aside what you want or things that benefit you for the sake of another human being. The more you do that, the more you train the muscle that sets aside your impulses.
Learning this restraint and practicing that deliberation will train your conscientiousness and eventually improve your productivity: the more you can set aside your impulses, the more you can study, work, and do the things that you need to do to achieve your goals.
The mind enjoys being focused and being entertained — and entertainment is simply a sensory experience that makes it easy for your mind to be focused.
When you work, your mind tends to be one-pointed. But over time, your mind starts to go from one-pointed to scattered. It starts to think about random things and break your concentration in favor of something it wants to focus on more. For example, if you play a video game and lose track of time, this is because it is pulling your attention and focus. When our focus is pulled toward things that take us away from our goals and needs, we refer to this as being distracted.
Discipline refers to the ability to put your attention back on your work or studies after you've become distracted.
The process of studying involves your mind going back and forth between the states of focused and distracted. On good days, the periods of focus are longer than the periods of distraction.
Before the advent of the internet, if you were in a library and your mind started to wander as you got bored, you'd sit there and wait, or even read a comic book for a half hour. But after a while, your mind would become bored of that instead and naturally coalesce back into a one-pointed focus on your work.
Technology has conditioned the mind to avoid boredom. Our attention is always on something: audiobooks, podcasts, videos, and so forth. We also might call this time "productive," which encourages us to engage more with these platforms. This makes us fall into a trap: our attention is always on something, and we get bored very easily. This makes engaging in deep focus very difficult.
It's natural for our minds to become bored and become distracted to a certain extent, but this problem has gotten significantly worse due to algorithmic entertainment. When we get bored today, we go to YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and similar "quick" activties. But unlike your attention being occupied with a comic for 30 minutes and then becoming bored enough to focus on your work, these platforms are specifically designed to occupy your attention for hours.
The dangerous part is that every time you use these platforms, you train them to get better at pulling your attention away. Algorithms observe what you engage with and suggest more things that are interesting—and therefore more likely to distract you—so that you never actually become bored of this.
If you can avoid using these platforms when you get distracted, then you won't need as much discipline as those who do, as you won't be consuming content designed to constantly pull your attention away.
There's a particular skill that we can develop to become more productive: the ability to tolerate boredom.
If you are lazy—that is, if you're good at sitting around and not doing anything—then this might mean you're not as easily distractable, and that's something you can double-down on. When your mind starts to wander and you start to get bored, sit with it, let your mind wander, and sit around not doing anything. Eventually, your mind will start to coalesce abnd become focused again. All you need to do is ride out the wave of boredom.
Try this: You can practice tolerating boredom by sitting and stare at a wall for an hour, with no distractions. While this is a devastatingly difficult exercise, it will help to increase your attention span. Do not listen to music, check the clock before your alarm sounds, or engage with anything. Simply stare at a wall for an hour, let your mind wander as much as it wants to, and watch the thoughts that arise with curiosity.
Easy mode: Go for a walk for an hour without any external stimulation, such as music, audiobooks, or podcasts. Simply walk and allow yourself to think.