It’s these small decisions every day that catch us, and I’m not sure about you, but I see supposed productivity hacks everywhere that promise you to 10x your productivity every day and that might be the one-way ticket to earning 15k a month …

… or whatever it is they say these days.

But I don’t want to 10x my productivity.

I want to do what’s needed and then find time for me. My son. My friends. My art.

And I hate that these days they have to be ‘tasked in’ now too for them to make it into the crazy busy schedules we have to have for life.

Or, sometimes, the opposite.

People talk about it all the time at work. That things come in peaks and troughs.

It’s either all at once, or not at all. All or nothing.

How the heck do I survive the days when people expect everything of me, and then days when it suddenly has nothing?

We don’t know how to handle nothing, or boredom, anymore, do we?

These days, I work on just writing down three things.

When things are overwhelming.

And when there’s nothing.

When I have so much to do it feels like the pressure will ooze out of my ears, I write down the three things I absolutely need to do first. Get them done.

Sure, there’s more to do afterwards, but do the first things first.

Work on it until finally things start moving.

It’s how you chip away. How to get going when everything feels like just too much.

And it’s the same when you have nothing to do.

Sometimes, I think days I have nothing to do are worse. How to create tasks out of nothing? Especially when it’s not my say. There are so many things I want to do personally, but at work, for example? Or if my mental health or ND periods are bad and my brain just tuned out and I’m staring about me like ‘… what. is. life?’

Pick three things.

Any three things.

I don’t care if they’re as simple as ‘get a glass of water. drink it. wash the cup.’

Done. three things. Okay. Can my brain think about the next ones yet?

Or things like: ‘Email Lisa back. Pay that convention invoice. Write a substack.’

Or things like: ‘Put music on. Do a Duolingo session. Pick up my son.’

Or chipping away at big things and you just mention the project name. ‘Work for 30 mins on X project. Meeting with Faizal about Y. Go for an afternoon brain walk.’

Literally, these days, when everything is overwhelming and underwhelming all at once, I don’t need or want fancy AI schedulers to look at what I do and fit it in so I am ten-thousand percent more productive and it looks like there are four of me. And I sure as hell ain’t thinking about chunking when I can’t guarantee if I’ll even get a long slot of time to do something before my son needs picking up and lives in eternal dakko or wakes early randomly or stays up late because FOMO.

Three things. Work through them. Chip away.

If you finish? Amazing.

Figure out what you wanna do after that. I ain’t gunna tell you right now to do more. Or to celebrate. To sit down and chill and eat a reward snack. We’re all in different places with different lives and systems, and each day we feel different anyway.

But I just want to take a moment to scream into a pillow at what’s expected of us nowadays (even from ourselves in our own heads) and how things are a weird paradox or too much and not enough all at once.

Because … fuuuck.

What is this?

Okay. I’mma go list the next three things I need to do.

To get moving.

To just … start.

What are yours?