
How a lazy bitch like me learned to be productive - epinards
https://www.madisontaskett.com/lazy-bastard-productivity/
======
somestag
There are strategies that tend to have better success rates than others—and to
be clear, I think this blog post gives good advice—but I'm suspicious of any
"successful" strategy that is merely the most recent in a long line of
attempts.

I think people change slowly—much more slowly than we usually assume. Every
time you try something to fix your life and you fail, you actually make a
little bit of progress on yourself, just not enough to switch your behavior
into something recognizably better. When you try a new strategy and succeed,
there is a strong chance that you would not have been successful had you not
made all of that incremental progress on yourself from all your failures.
That's why it's important to never give up on yourself.

I've had "breakthroughs" that were basically just me trying the same thing I
tried (and failed at) years earlier. The difference was that I'd gotten
stronger in subtle ways over that time. Then, 6 months later, I'm back to my
old habits. This is depressing, but when I remember that this is the first
time I was able to stick with something for _months_ instead of _weeks_ , I
realize I've actually made progress on myself.

Even though this isn't strictly about productivity, I think the best lesson
from OP is that things get easier as you practice them. This seems obvious,
but when we talk about building skills, we often frame it as us _rising_ to
the challenge. I.e., there's this very hard thing we want to do, and we need
to become stronger to be able to do it. This isn't wrong _per se_ , but I
think it's bad for motivation because it frames progress as doing as doing
increasingly more difficult things. Instead of thinking about _getting better_
, I think it's more helpful to frame progress as things _becoming easier_. No
matter how weak you feel you are, the things you find difficult in life will
become easier as you work on them.

~~~
WalterBright
You're quite right. It's amazing what one can accomplish if one lets oneself
be satisfied what incremental progress, no matter how small.

For example, I dislike doing pullups. Many times over the decades, I embarked
on a program of daily doing as many pullups as I could. I failed because it
just took too much willpower.

I finally hit on a solution. I started with doing 3 pullups a day. 3 pullups
are easy. It didn't take much willpower at all. After a few months, I
"graduated" to 4, which then was just as easy. After several years, I am now
up to 10, which is easy, and something I had kept failing at before.

You might think "why wait several years", but my goal with this is long term,
so that doesn't bother me.

~~~
jeremycw
This is good advice. However, I've seen this advice before and the example is
usually something where it's easy to imagine what an incremental step is. The
advice is when you want to do n just do < n. This is great for some things but
I find it doesn't work for everything. So I'd like to just expand on this for
tasks where doing < n doesn't really make sense.

For example, if you're trying to solve a difficult bug it can be overwhelming
and you feel like you're not making progress and you procrastinate because you
don't have the time to dive in for five hours and you feel like spending
thirty minutes isn't enough to accomplish anything.

My advice, if you're struggling with tasks like these is to make excessive
notes. Save the link to the Stack Overflow question you looked at. Write down
file names and line numbers with your thoughts. Copy bits of relevant
documentation right into your notes. The basic idea is that if you can ramp up
from your notes in less time than it took you to make them then you have made
progress.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
+1 to notes and documentation.

30 minutes won't be enough to solve many nasty bugs, but it can be enough time
to rule out a possible cause, or rule out a possible technique as not being
helpful for tracking the bug down.

One of my nastier crashes took two weeks to root cause - I eventually ruled
out every smart technique I could think of, and resorted to dumb ones. 15 or
so build + test cycles later (taking maybe 10 minutes of work each and another
2 hours of waiting for builds to complete) I'd bisected VCS history and found
the cause. Turned out to be a change to use some third party code that looked
completely unrelated. So unrelated that I spent another 10 minutes creating a
completely isolated standalone repro case to verify I'd actually found the
culprit (I had) instead of something that would hide the symptoms.

------
nate
I hate running. I'd do it because it seems like the easiest way for me to get
a cardio workout to hopefully live longer. But I couldn't get past some kind
of 4 mile barrier in my head. It was just too boring. But I started pushing
myself like 10 more feet every run. Why not just go to that next bench, that
next tree I told myself. I'd make sure to even stop myself if I was feeling
good. "Nope, don't go any further or I'll have to go even further tomorrow."
It took a long time obviously, and eventually I started enjoying the runs more
and more. The 10 foot limit got pushed longer. But I finally got to 11 miles
and began to understand what everyone is enjoying in these long runs. Now I
LOVE 11 mile runs and am sad I've had to stop doing them (covid related time
yada yada).

And now I apply this pattern to a lot of things. I hate waking up early.
Well... after months of inching up the wake up alarm I'm now a consistent
5:30am riser and dig the early quiet morning productivity.

This small, continuous, incremental that you barely notice stuff is a powerful
weapon.

~~~
01100011
For me it took having a friend. We started out as two fat guys, bringing beer
on our lazy hikes. Slowly we started competing with each other, trying not to
let the other one get too far ahead. Over 2 years we went from lazy fat guys
to pulling 12-25 mile hikes and running as much as we could tolerate. I ended
up in a shape I never would have imagined, being overweight and un-athletic
most of my life.

------
bsuh
Maybe it's just best to let go instead of trying to mini-max your life's
productivity, train yourself like Pavlov's dogs with XYZ productivity systems,
and guilt-shame yourself over each day you miss out on part of an evergrowing
habit list of shoulda-coulda-woulda's.

Maybe procrastination is an emotional regulation problem and tying your self-
worth to your productivity leads to more internal conflict between guilt of
not doing enough vs fear of failure.

Maybe we could approach improvement out of a place of genuine interest or
self-care, instead of treating ourselves like a computer on a cron schedule
and then inevitably getting frustrated when we discover that we're human.

~~~
partyboat1586
Yup. If you tie your self worth to your productivity then it makes emotionally
difficult tasks even more difficult.

Ask yourself:

'Why do I want to make this change?'

'Why does doing this thing make me feel bad?'

The answer to the first question is just for you and it should be solid. If
you don't believe it then it's not going to work. The answer to the second
question is usually either because you have had a bad experience in the past
or because it's enough out of your comfort zone that it challenges your
identity. It takes a lot less than you would imagine to challenge your
identity.

If you can work through these issues a little bit before you start on your
journey of change and continue working on them as you go it will be a much
smoother ride and you will be far less likely to give up. It involves being OK
with negative emotion during the act and taking the time to process those
feelings afterwards.

The cool thing is this doesn't just apply to productivity but anything you
want to change in your life. Sometimes you need change and sometimes you are
just guilting yourself into doing things other people told you were good for
you. That is why you start by asking 'why?'.

------
colecut
"A couple of months ago, I was a train wreck that ate too many cinnamon rolls
and watched Netflix while laying in sweats on the couch. Yesterday, I ran 3
miles, did 40 minutes of yoga, meditated, ate steel cut oats with berries for
breakfast, then turned on my favorite business podcast while I showered, all
before work started."

Kudos to your success. Please do not get complacent. I had a similar brief
transformation at the start of this year and felt on top of the world for a
couple months.

Then I got Achilles tendonitis which made even walking extremely painful for
about 6 weeks. My son's mom died after a long fight with cancer. That same
week my current girlfriend was diagnosed with cancer. And then quarantine
happened.

I let these events allow me to regress back to worse off than I was when I
started. And it all felt so easy at first

~~~
mason55
Yeah it's easy to stick with this kind of thing for a few months when
everything is going well.

The challenge is keeping it up beyond the few months when the novelty wears
off, life gets in the way, and it becomes difficult.

I personally find that these kinds of things keep my interest for about about
three months so I have to find ways to make progress towards goals while also
changing whatever I'm doing enough to continue to hold my interesting.
Examples might include changing my workout routine in a way that is different
enough to hold my interest but similar enough to continue making progress. Or
switch to learning a different style of guitar. Stuff like that.

Having defined goals to begin with helps a lot.

~~~
epinards
Yes I agree. I call it the 'dip of doom' that happens at the 4-6 month mark.
If you push through it, you're golden, but so many people give up.

------
Barrin92
>A couple of months ago, I was a train wreck that ate too many cinnamon rolls
and watched Netflix while laying in sweats on the couch. Yesterday, I ran 3
miles, did 40 minutes of yoga, meditated, ate steel cut oats with berries for
breakfast, then turned on my favorite business podcast while I showered, all
before work started.

This reminds me of this guy with the bookshelf in his garage that went viral
on youtube years ago. I honestly don't think gamifying your life and jumping
on the hedonistic treatmill is a step up from eating cinnamon rolls at 3 am,
just the flip side of the same coin. It Reminds me of Baudrillard in _America_

 _" The skateboarder with his Walkman, the intellectual working on his
wordprocessor, the Bronx breakdancer whirling frantically in the Roxy, the
jogger and the body-builder: everywhere, whether in regard to the body or the
mental faculties, you find the same blank solitude, the same narcissistic
refraction. This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. It is the only
object on which everyone is made to concentrate, not as a source of pleasure,
but as an object of frantic concern, in the obsessive fear of failure or
substandard performance, a sign and an anticipation of death, that death to
which no one can any longer give a meaning, but which everyone knows has at
all times to be prevented. The body is cherished in the perverse certainty of
its uselessness, in the total certainty of its non-resurrection. Now, pleasure
is an effect of the resurrection of the body, by which it exceeds that
hormonal, vascular and dietetic equilibrium in which we seek to imprison it,
that exorcism by fitness and hygiene. So the body has to be made to forget
pleasure as present grace, to forget its possible metamorphosis into other
forms of appearance and become dedicated to the Utopian preservation of a
youth that is, in any case, already lost. For the body which doubts its own
existence is already half-dead, and the current semi-yogic, semi-ecstatic cult
of the body is a morbid preoccupation. The care taken of the body while it is
alive prefigures the way it will be made up in the funeral home, where it will
be given a smile that is really ‘into’ death."_

~~~
papeda
> _This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. It is the only object
> on which everyone is made to concentrate, not as a source of pleasure, but
> as an object of frantic concern, in the obsessive fear of failure or
> substandard performance, a sign and an anticipation of death, that death to
> which no one can any longer give a meaning, but which everyone knows has at
> all times to be prevented._

It's a huge rhetorical jump to go from "people engaging in focused activity"
to "ritualistic pre-enactment of inevitable death", and even after re-reading
this quote several times, I'm confused by how that jump is supposed to make
sense?

~~~
Barrin92
is it really such a jump with a reference like this in the original post?

 _" And it's almost effortless now. Like, wtf. Have I too become one of those
insane Patrick Bateman-like beings that I thought all productive people were a
few months ago? How did I finally pull it together? Here's the deal."_

It may be a tongue in cheek reference but the comparison to Bateman is apt. He
is actually the logical endpoint of this sort of life optimization, surface
without anything beneath it and symbolic death. I'm not so sure how large the
number of people is who unironically thing Bateman is a rolemodel rather than
a parody and symbol of the sort of yuppie culture on display here.

------
mellosouls
It isn't mentioned in the blog as far as I can see but the author appears to
be advocating "micro habits" (also known under similar and other monikers,
small habits, BJ Fogg's method etc).

The idea being you pick up a new habit using similar techniques to pomodoro, a
little bit at a time.

Example of similar reflections:

[https://hackernoon.com/micro-habits-changed-my-
life-47f572bf...](https://hackernoon.com/micro-habits-changed-my-
life-47f572bfc153)

One thing I did find useful in this particular essay (the OP) was a reminder
of the relative difficulty of spending X amount of time doing something new
compared to the same amount of time doing something second nature - which is
magnified further according to how boring, painful, or just plain irritating
it is.

~~~
papeda
I saw similar advice from a very different source a couple of months ago. It
was a book about exercise with the following advice for stretching: don't go
until hurts, but go until it's slightly uncomfortable, then try to relax
there, then repeat. Maybe a little trite, but I feel that advice is pretty
widely applicable.

------
epinards
I recently got my life together and wanted to share what's been working for
me.

~~~
10xRich
I definitely relate to this.

Sometimes the anxiety of doing something important makes that something seem
much harder than it actually is.

Lowering the bar helps ease that anxiety.

I've picked up a whole flossing habit just by starting with "at least one
tooth and then you can stop if you'd like" ha

~~~
epinards
I did the same thing with flossing! Almost at one year streak now. Glad you've
found something that works for you too. :)

------
kosmischemusik
I've been trying to build habits forever. The problem is I try to do too many
things at once - exercise, get more sleep, read more, write, study.

As much as I know that habits need to be stacked, I just can't get myself to
be patient and do one thing at a time.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
Recently started running again and I have to consistently remind myself to
take it easy and not overdo it. 3 weeks ago getting through 20 mins was a
struggle. Now after 20 mins I feel like I can do 20 more. That's a good way to
get hurt.

Consistency is like compound interest. If you get 15-20 mins of easy-paced
exercise in 6 times a week (or even daily), you will get more exercise done
than if you do 2-3 hard workouts. In addition, you reduce the chances of
injury.

~~~
snazz
This seems to be true of learning as well. It's strange how easy it is (for me
at least) to break the cycle of doing something every day--I tell myself that
it's okay to skip today so long as I make it up tomorrow (or on the weekend or
whatever). At that point it's easy to keep putting it off just through
inertia.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
I learned this over and over again in college. Cramming is never as effective
as smaller chucks of daily studying.

Learning a new mathematical technique or programming paradigm is similar to
exercise. Your brain needs to develop some "muscle" memory for a new way of
thinking to stick.

------
jchook
Some books that helped me:

\- _The War of Art_ by Steven Pressfield

\- _Can 't Hurt Me_ by David Goggins

\- _Indistractable_ by Nir Eyal

\- _Mastery_ by Robert Greene

~~~
mrwnmonm
Why "Can't Hurt Me" is so popular?

~~~
jchook
Say whatever bad you want about this book, I probably agree. Regardless of its
obvious flaws, it changed my life for the better.

I first started listening to the audio in the gym. I did 2x as many rows as my
previous set just because of what Goggins had to say at that moment. I did the
impossible. He gave me 2x the endurance with words alone.

At times it gave me those, “people and the world are so god damn beautiful”
teary eyes

~~~
mrwnmonm
No, I didn't read it but I wanted to know what all the fuzz is about. Recently
I had a collection on my kindle called "Regrets" for the books that I bought
and found out it was trash, so I am a little skeptical about new books.

------
scrumper
Ha! Well that was a pure treat - instantly grabby title leading to a concise,
witty, well-constructed article, containing good advice. Loved it for all
those reasons.

~~~
epinards
Thank you!!

------
mshekow
The advice to start really slowly is good. It also makes sense to have a kind
of plan, on paper, to commit to, and to remind yourself, holding yourself
accountable. Blogging about that is not a bad idea, either.

What I did wrong (and sometimes still do) is that you cannot just add new
things without removing other things. It helps to be fully aware of what kinds
of things you'll have to remove from your life. What is the habit you're
replacing(!) with a new habit? Food for thought ... ;).

------
JoeAltmaier
Apocryphal? Reads like a self-help magazine article. Sure this could work, for
some. But nothing about falling off the wagon (and how to get back on),
padding/rounding effort until its all padding and no effort, folks tearing you
down because _they_ can't imagine succeeding and wanting you to fail too, and
so on.

Life isn't "This one thing that changed my life".

~~~
adamrt
> Sure this could work, for some. But nothing about

Yeah its a blog post not a doctors orders. Someone shared some positivity, on
their personal blog, with a clearly playful title.

If it helps "some" people then its a success. Everything doesn't have to work
for everyone.

Lighten up

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure, its a puff piece. Like I said.

Got any ideas about really improving your life to share? Addressing anything I
brought up? Something to move the conversation forward?

Anything that could help a person like me, who could really use help on this.

~~~
epinards
Hi Joe. I recommend finding a therapist that you really connect with, and
perhaps looking into various 12 step groups, as there are many addictions that
we humans struggle with that aren't necessarily drugs or alcohol. Wishing you
the best.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Is there one for procrastination and malaise?

~~~
epinards
strangely, workaholics anonymous has meetings specifically for work avoidance
aka procrastination (I used to struggle with that a lot too)
[http://www.workaholics-anonymous.org/meetings/13-meeting-
det...](http://www.workaholics-anonymous.org/meetings/13-meeting-
details?meetingid=a047000000HmB8ZAAV)

------
seebetter
Speaking of lazy, if your brain is lazy like mine it might interpret this
sentence differently:

“I only make one or two habits each month.”

The words above it combined with the expectation that I thought it said “baby
habits” made my brain flash “I only hit 1 or 2 babies each month.” Hopefully
I’m not the only person that experienced this.

~~~
epinards
Yikes, thanks for pointing that out!

------
troughway
Related to this is Scott Adams' Goals vs. Systems -
[https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-
systems/](https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/)

~~~
Reedx
Also Atomic Habits[1], based in part on Adams' system[2].

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-
Break/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-
Break/dp/0735211299)

2\. [https://jamesclear.com/goals-systems](https://jamesclear.com/goals-
systems)

------
gonational
It’s amazing how many things exist in modern western culture that are geared
around the most basic principles that used to be automatic, like “work hard”,
“make your bed”, etc.

However, it’s easy to draw a strong correlation between this and the the
departure from farm / manufacturing life into modern urban / suburban office
life.

In, perhaps, 60 years, we will be at a point where the vast majority of people
won’t even know anyone who works hard (from today’s perspective, such as a
garbage man or farm hand). In the long run, these kinds of jobs simply won’t
be valued; they’ll all have been “tractored out”.

~~~
oillio
Won't be valued, or won't exist? The way automation is going, in 60 years your
trash will take itself out.

~~~
fratlas
Like all things in life, it's about balance so you don't become accustomed.
Can't wait for the day I only have to cook when I _want_ to; because
automated, healthy, home-cooked meals are possible.

------
michalu
A little bit too soon to give advice on how to be productive after only two
months. You haven't conquered laziness unless you're consistently productive
over the course of the years and that state becomes your normal.

Most people have these bursts of productivity for a short time that follows a
slump and a realization.

Sometimes you try new technique and that trust in the technique provides
enough motivation to get you going for a while.

But in fact, relying on a technique is relying on outside factors not having
trust in you. Trust in yourself is the beginning of the lasting change.

------
DecayingOrganic
If you’d like to troubleshoot why you are unable to perform certain
actions/behaviors based on a framework, I highly recommend reading about Fogg
Behavior Model [0].

It’s a simple yet powerful framework that you can use to gain a better
understanding of your behaviors.

[0]: [https://captology.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2010/11/Be...](https://captology.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2010/11/Behavior-Model-for-Persuasive-Design.pdf)

------
atemerev
Every productivity advice: "make routines".

ADHD sufferers: uuuugh...

~~~
rajsripathi
Or people with bipolar disorder or health issues. As someone who had to get my
thyroid removed due to cancer last year, it's been a challenge to feel the
same everyday. Still working hard at routines - morning yoga, breathing
exercise, etc

------
flipactual
I’ve recently gotten my shit together by deciding to stop making new habits
and worrying about what I do or don’t accomplish

It’s been incredibly freeing to not worry so much about hitting these
arbitrary KPIs and instead just see what I feel like doing in any given moment

You’ll struggle to find any blog posts about this perspective though... we’re
all too busy enjoying life

------
ambivalents
Thanks for sharing. Not going to lie it was the title of your post that got me
to click. But the content was solid too.

~~~
clairity
a little datapoint that she might not be a bad growth marketer then.

------
Noos
It's hard to take advice from someone who says "in a couple of months i became
this" at the start of the blog, and who ends it with actually telling us it
was 6 months.

------
bryanrasmussen
I find myself suspicious of anyone that starts off comparing themselves with
Patrick Bateman.

------
angel_j
Self care counts as productivity now?

~~~
klyrs
Absolutely! A huge amount of "yak-shaving" is fundamentally caused by a lack
of maintenance. Self-care is maintenance for your mental and physical health.
It might feel like a distraction in the moment, but in the long run, it's a
time saver.

------
quietthrow
Serious question / Genuinely Curious

Why would the author call herself a bitch? why implicitly promote
objectification of women by explicitly being ok with (crazy in my opinion) the
personal choice of objectifying onseself?

I understand that she is a growth hacker and her thinking may be perhaps a
title like this Only to get clicks. If so, even then, it still seems
conflicting and contradicting to a personal beliefs of herself not being an
object. On the other hand if she like to objectify herself why would somebody
sane do thst ?

~~~
epinards
1\. Thank you for the question; I do think it's worth asking and discussing.
2\. I'm not sure 'bitch' should be a negative term, and my self-esteem is high
enough that I feel comfortable owning the term. 3\. I'm a growth marketer and
I knew it would get a bunch of clicks.

~~~
quietthrow
I agree with you that bitch should not be a negative term. After all it just a
female dog. But colloquially it is used as a negative term. That’s the
society/world we live in. It dosnt matter what you and I believe how it should
be used. What matters is how’s it is actually used. You wouldn’t get the
clicks you were after if the word was used as you think it should be would
you? And my question comes from that perspective of grounding in our world’s
reality. Given that, by used the term, it promotes objectification - May be
not yours since your self esteem allows you to own it - but of women in
general. And that might be too selfish of an action perhaps?

~~~
epinards
Maybe. But maybe it's like calling Voldemort 'he who shall not be named.'“Call
him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name
increases fear of the thing itself.” By using 'taboo words' like bitch, we
decrease the stigma around them.

------
redmattred
I know it's meant to be a punchy title to entice people to read (mission
accomplished), but just be careful with the language you use and internalize
about yourself.

From skimming some of your other articles you seem anything but lazy.

Glad to see there is some acknowledgement in your article about setting
realistic goals and putting some limits on what you consider "enough".

