7 Productivity Hacks from someone with the attention span of a goldfish

Written by Joshua Hill for Pro-Active Communications , 19 Sept 2023

Hey - don’t roll your eyes at me. I know what you’re probably thinking: not another dumb article by some self professed productivity guru. My feed is already inundated by clickbaity titles such as tHiS pRoDuCtIvItY hAcK wIlL cHaNgE yOuR lIfE, and perhaps, tHe UnExPeCtEd KeY tO bOoStInG yOuR pRoDuCtIvItY or maybe even, hOw ElOn MuSk rUnS a MiLlIOn CoMpAnIeS aNd StIlL hAs LiKe 11 ChIlDrEn.

I promise that this one will be different though. I’m not some wizard of the workflow world. In fact, I managed to fail University a bunch of times because I’m so good at procrastinating. Heck, if I wasn’t born with ADHD, I’ve damn sure got it now from my crippling addiction to Instagram Reels.

But despite these tremendous flaws, I’ve made significant progress in my ability to focus for long periods of time, and most of the techniques are actually really simple. If I could get your attention for a few short minutes, I promise you’ll probably get something useful out of it.

1) Your smartphone is a bottomless abyss

ADHD rates are increasing at an alarming rate - in a way that seems very much congruous with smartphone usage. Most applications are literally designed to capture your attention for as long a period of time as they possibly can: I’m sure we have all had the experience of being sucked into TikTok or Instagram after hopping onto your phone to quickly answer a message, checking the time and then realising an entire hour has slipped by.

Keep your phone as far away from your desk as you possibly can while being productive. If you need it urgently for work related communication, try using some sort of focus mode.

2) Look after yourself

I think we could all gain a lot by treating ourselves as cold, dispassionate machines. No seriously. Most people are very good at looking after their cars, but very poor at looking after themselves. You would not expect your vehicle’s engine to operate very well if you filled it up with bad fuel, so why would you fill yourself up with junk food and trash television?

It's amazing how much stuff we can actually get done in a day if we simply just slept well the night before, ate decently and drank a sufficient amount of water.

3) Convoluted morning routines are wasting your time

We’ve all seen those videos of the perplexingly complex morning routines of silicon valley business bros and tech CEOs. Well guess what? Waking up before 5 AM, meditating, doing ancient breathing techniques, journaling, practicing kundalini yoga and fitting in some weightlifting well you’re at it, is not going to work for most people.

Keep it simple, and start your day with something that makes waking up just a little less painful - you’re going to be far less likely to hit the snooze button.? I like to go and sit outside in our garden for 5 minutes with my coffee.

4) Productivity app? More like productivity nap

Productivity apps are an overcomplicated solution for a simple problem. Most of them even secretly harvest your data. If you want to track how much time you spend working, I find an old fashioned clock works the best.

5) Just get started

I began to understand my own time wasting habits a lot better when I realized that procrastination often resulted as a fear of failure. I was so focused on getting every project I started to be absolutely perfect, that even the simplest aspects began to become needlessly complicated.

Now I focus on just getting started, even if getting started means that I write down a terrible mess of gibberish. It's far easier to polish something up once you’ve gotten your main ideas properly fleshed out.

6) Boredom is beautiful

In the modern era we have almost completely eradicated boredom, and I believe this to be a grave mistake. I find I am at my most creative when I am bored - it is where I encounter my best ideas to problems that have been plaguing me. By making space for boredom and doing nothing in my life, I am far more productive when actually doing work. Boredom can be as simple as driving your car while listening to silence, or even just sitting in the garden and listening to the birds chirp.

7) Brown noise

I get distracted stupidly easily. If a conversation is happening nearby, even if it is as mundane as small talk about the weather, I can’t help but zone in on it. By using good headphones and a brown noise playlist on YouTube, I cannot help but be focused on the work that is in front of me.

If you’ve made it this far to the end of my article, your attention span is probably a whole lot better than mine. What was I talking about again? I completely forgot.