How to be PRODUCTIVE

Productivity is not how much you produced, but what you achieved.
When I started the project, I started a stats page where I was going to note how productive I was on any given day. I posted there the number of words written, pages read, hours worked - I thought these were good indicators of productivity.

I was terribly wrong.

Measuring productivity - unless you're running a factory - based solely on volume produced gives a superficial, limited picture of your productivity. Actually, if you come up with a clever and creative approach to a problem - conventionally, to fit 500 words into 100 - then measuring productivity by volume will result in less productivity!

It's easy to get bogged down in metrics and statistics, but in personal productivity, statistics are secondary. The important thing is not how much you produced, but how much you accomplished.

It's important to engage in valuable and meaningful tasks. It's also important to be able to manage your time, energy, and attention so that you have the resources to get more done. But at the end of the day, when you spend all your time, energy, and attention, the only thing you have left is what you have accomplished and what you have changed in the world by meaningfully spending one day of your life.