I don’t care much about tracking productivity because I am not a machine that can be optimised. I am a human who struggles, on some days I just don’t produce much work, sometimes nothing at all. The way I plan my week ensures I get something done, and completely ignores speed. Slow progress is still progress. It’s more about preserving momentum than ensuring I achieve some metric that optimises my productivity.
Short-term planning
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. - Allen Saunders
I don’t like planning my day down to the minute. Life always gets in the way, or perhaps more accurately, the universe doesn’t care about my pitiful attempts at planning for the (near-immediate) future, she does as she pleases.
I still think it makes sense to plan for the future. I have ideas about what I’d like to be doing at 35, 40, 50, 60, and 70. Beyond that seems a bit too optimistic for my taste. All of those plans are based around what I value.
Values change over time, but generally not by much. For example, I value my health, and always will. How I’ll go about maintaining and improving it does change. I love running currently, but I don’t know how long I can keep doing it. Maybe I’ll injure my knee some day, or lose my leg, and have to adapt.
UPDATE (August 2026): I no longer love running. I love the gym now. I have completely changed my physique with a simple routine. Have a look at the data to see just how much.
I wake up and plan my day. That takes no time at all, usually, because all I gotta do is pick a single task. I pick easy ones first, unless there are none. It’s just to get the ball rolling.
One task.
That’s it.
Makes it easy not to feel overwhelmed and I set myself up for success. I rarely do just one thing. If I exceed my one completed task for the day I get a boost in motivation. If I can’t get it done then that usually means I need to break the task down into smaller bits.
I organize my day around ‘blocks of time’. I allocate one ‘health’ block, and one ‘focus’ block to any single day. It doesn’t matter when I do them. I don’t care about how many hours I work on any single day, as long as it’s focused and deliberate. I’m basically guaranteed that something good will get done during any single week.
My calendar is meant to remind me of my long-term commitments; be it birthdays, deadlines, or appointments. Nothing else is on there. I first started doing this in college when I was taking on more credits (89ECTS) than the average student (60ECTS) and succeeded.
I write down my accomplishments in a 'work completed' Google Sheet. I'm not perfect at it. I don't keep meticulous track, but I like the idea of tracking major milestones.
The end result is amazing. I never complete just one task, I complete at least 3 but most of the time a great many more. And the burden on my psyche is essentially zero. I use the same approach at the gym. I don't go to the gym thinking I need to complete my entire routine, but focus entirely on the one exercise I love. And once I'm actually there everything else falls into place.
Remember, you're not a robot. Don't expect your productivity to look like one. You can, however, maintain momentum by leaning into the unpredictable nature of living a life.
Long-term planning
I approach future planning more or less the same way.
Future blocks.
This website is one such 'future block'. It's a long-term commitment to capture much about who I am, how I lived, and what I believe(d) in. It's what I intend to leave behind when I'm dead. I don't need to work on it every week for it to grow year after year, but I do try to commit to working on it at least once a week.
My calendar reflects this. I usually work on this blog whenever work slows down or when something major has happened. It grows and grows precisely because I'm not anal about when I work on it. My only commitment is to plan one future block every 1 to 2 weeks. And remember, planning happens on any given day. I just randomly decide to do it because it's important to me.
You need to decide for yourself what drives you. If you're not value-driven you'll never stick to anything long-term. This is true in careers as well. If the thing you care about is a particular company rather than the work, you'll never accomplish anything great there. Commit to the work because you care about it, and go with whoever is willing to commit themselves to you in return. You'll go far beyond your dreams.
Whenever life throws you under the bus, go back to what it is you value. That alone will save you heaps of trouble. Heartbreak? Commit to your health. Commit to a creative endeavour. Commit to your friends. Commit to whatever it is you value and you'll cease to be whirled around.
Your values may change, and that's okay. This is growth. When I first wrote this page in 2021, I valued financial independence, full creative control, and building my own company. That was the future block in play, and this page ended on it. At almost 40 I value different things: structural commitment, feeling rooted, purpose, and working from my strengths. I'm certain 'future blocks' will look a bit different again when I approach my 50s.
One task a day. One future block every week or two. That's all you need to be productive without the stress of a strict schedule that won't survive the week anyway.