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Being unproductive is the one thing we are naturally good at. Stalling, procrastinating, coming up with excuses why you should not get to work. “I just wanna check my email for 5 minutes, I swear”, and before you know it an hour has passed. Watching Youtube videos, reading your favorite blogs, sitting on Facebook. It is so easy to become distracted on the internet.

Even in real life, Televisions (and DVD players) are one of the biggest contributors to unproductivity (if there is such a word). Especially TV series, I know how addictive they can be. Once you start a good show, you have to keep watching it, and often there are 3 or more seasons, which cause you to watch for hours and days on end. And that promise to get to work as soon as we are done with the movie, that is just to clear the guilt that we have of knowing we should be working instead of lazing.

Its easier to be unproductive but at the end of the day it feels better being productive. It takes a little more effort to sit down and get in the productive mode, but once your work is done, it feels rewarding, and hopefully is.

For the first week in Amsterdam, I have been super unproductive. I went out every single night, came back between 2am and 4am and only woke up sometimes as late as 2pm. I managed to do two blog posts and that was pretty much it. I spent hours watching Prison Break right from the beginning (it’s an awesome show by the way, I’m almost done with season 2 now) and ate a lot of junk food like fries, chocolates, burgers and crisps.

It was fun to do for that week, and I don’t regret it. However, after a week it starts feeling dirty and unnatural. It doesn’t feel good going out to clubs and bars every night, getting home so late and sleeping through most of your day. Getting nothing done during the day and eating unhealthy doesn’t feel very good either.

Life is not about being a workaholic, not at all. It is nice to take vacation, do nothing and be lazy or do some hobbies. I just know how hard it can be to get yourself to sit down and work, especially when you work for yourself and not for a boss. There is all the freedom to do nothing if you want, but there is also the responsibility to get things done, build up the business and make money.

Let’s take UpgradeReality as an example. The aim is to build it up to a great, helpful resource about self improvement with a couple thousand readers and high rankings in search engines. If I procrastinate and watch TV instead of working on my blog or writing blog posts, I am not magically going to get more readers or better rankings. However (if I take things day by day or week by week and keep writing posts and guest posts on other blogs), over time UpgradeReality will grow towards the goals I set for it.

How To Be Productive:

The key to being productive is to resist the temptation of procrastinating and just getting to work. Once you sit down and start working and get in that mode, then being creative and productive comes pretty easily. The fact of knowing that things are not going to happen by themselves, combined with the ambition to get somewhere, make money and achieve things, are a good motivator to focus, sit down and start working.

I find that getting things done and working on something actually feels good. Sometimes writing a blog post for me seems like a big chore, and I beat around the bush, but once I sit down and start writing then I really enjoy the process and the end result.

Laziness of often justified by “I dont care”.
“I dont care if i get fat.”
“I don’t care if I dont make that much money.”
“I don’t care if I don’t have a date for friday nights.”
The truth is that deep down you really do care.

Another helpful secret to working consistenly is finding some sort of routine. If you work for youself you have the luxury of choosing your own routine. Personally I am most productive early in the morning when I wake up. For the rest of my time here in Amsterdam I choose to wake up, work for 2-3 hours and then taking the rest of the day to enjoy and have fun. It can turn out that I work 6 hours or more, but only if I want to or feel that I need to. I want a minimum of 2 hours a day dedicated to my projects.

Maybe you are more productive at night. In that case it is wise to set up your routine for those hours. If you are really dedicated and focused, then you can be more productive in 2-3 hours than most people can in a 8-10 hour shift. This is great because you get more done AND you have more time to play.

The Secret To Being Productive:

• Resist the temptation of procrastinating.
• Motivate yourself with the goal of achieving something.
• Sit down and get to work.
• Focus and dedicated your attention to your work for a few hours.
• Rinse, wash and repeat.

Have a Rockin’ day
Diggy