Productivity: Stop Planning, Start Doing.

I’ve been a voracious consumer of content to be more productive over the past year or two; this isn’t just on youtube although that was where it all started. Over the past year I’ve read many books on business, productivity and success with the idea that learning how to become more productive and ‘successful,’ it’ll increase my chances of becoming so. I was wrong. I am beginning to realise that the best way to learn is to simply do. Don’t read, watch or listen. Do. Do whatever it is that you want to achieve. We are all a product of our behaviours so if you want to become a world class athlete, you’re not going to read all about how to be an athlete, you just have to do it. Like making investments, the earlier you start doing something, the sooner you’ll improve and the sooner you will achieve your goal, whatever that may be. For me, I want to be a world class researcher, so I clearly just need to do more research. I can read all about how to do research but until I’m doing it a lot, I’m not going to start improving.

Similarly, I also don’t just want to be one thing, I’d prefer to be good at a few things so if inevitably my mind or passions change over time, I’m not locked into a single path in life, I’m able to lean into another ‘thing’ I’m doing. Currently that other ‘thing’ is creating content about a really odd collection of stuff. If you’ve seen my blog posts they are very random, they span productivity, health, philosophy, fiction writing! and also document own challenges with just being human. I’ve also noticed that those two worlds for me, research and writing are currently very separate and I’d die if my supervisors read my blogs. I’m hoping over the next year to really unify those two aspects of my life and maybe use my blog to help my knowledge in research, and vice versa. I’m also going to be starting a podcast on the untalked about aspects of exercising and being an athlete. I’m doing this with my girlfriend who brings the Athlete part of the show as well as a wealth of knowledge about the human body as well, being an exercise physiology student like me.

Enough about what I’m doing, I’ve realised it’s about time I stop reading about how to be productive and ‘successful’ and just start working away at it, and I think you should too. You learn so much by doing and if you don’t start now, when will you?