Have you considered how often we are constantly bombarded with overzealous advice like “Wake up earlier than the rest”, “Follow your Passion”, “Maintain a journal!”etc.

On good days, completing your projects, meeting your goals make you feel good. But on days when you are already, this kind of vague, generic advice makes you feel bad. Why? It is because they don’t take into account individual personality and work style differences and circumstances.

You see, everyone is an individual ‘being’, and thus has a distinct style of ‘doing’ things.

However, our work culture is centered around and clearly obsessed with productivity. Over achievers and workaholics are glorified and people who like to maintain a healthy work and life balance are looked down upon and considered ‘lazy’.

Meanwhile there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of productivity, the pressure to be productive 24/7, seven days a week is unrealistic.

Moreover, the resultant bombardment of productivity advice and tips, promising to make you super efficient and productive from motivational speakers, personal coaches, productivity gurus, your boss and mentors, even from your well-intentioned parents, friends and spouse, seem overwhelming.

While these overly ambitious slogans, popular productivity advice and tips can motivate us for a bit, work for a while, you learn the hard way how empty and one-dimensional they are as soon as you get into the thick of things!

What happens is that unrealistic productivity tips make you burnout fast! You are unable to achieve the results that you aimed for. You are unable to sustain your performance and results! More significantly, you feel frustrated because you think that there is something wrong with you, as a particular productivity advice appears to work well for everyone else but you!

Hence, glorifying popular but generic productivity advice sets unrealistic expectations and creates a culture of toxic productivity and overwhelm.

Here are the top 3 popular productivity tips and what’s wrong with them:

Just Follow Your Passion

The glorification of the ‘hustle and grind’ culture has given rise to a lot of feel good advice that holds little value in the real world. “Just do what you love!”, “Follow your passion or your heart” are terrible as productivity advice because not every passion or hobby can be turned into a viable and successful career.

Furthermore, merely passion isn’t enough for success, you need to have saleable skills, aptitude, attitude, patience and the willingness to work hard patiently and consistently for years in order to succeed.

In an ideal world, all of us would be doing work that we love and getting paid handsomely for it. But most of us know that doing what you love might not be enough to pay the bills.

The truth is that most of us have to work through boring jobs nd long hours to pay the bills and support our families.

All the ‘laptop living’, ‘being my own boss’ and ‘working from the beach’ phrases peddled by social media influencers are mere fantasies. These glamourized snippets don’t depict the actual struggles of making a living, skill and career development.

Wake Up Early to Do your Best Work 

“Wake up early and slay the day,” we are made to believe. The truth is that productivity is not always about staring your day at the earliest i.e., the 5 a.m. or 7 a.m. Rather, it’s about the mindset and energy level you wake up with, and consequently what you are able to accomplish.

This advice is terrible for a working-from-home mom who wakes up several times a night for her toddlers, who is responsible for not just managing her schedule but that of her young ones. Likewise, it won’t work for someone who is more of a night owl than a morning songbird. Not everyone wakes up fresh in the morning. Hence, not everyone is able to do their best in the morning. Some end up feeling more tired if they force themselves to wake up and start early irrespective of the rest they have gotten the night earlier.

This advice is impractical in a world divided in different time zones, and team members are collaborating across the globe as teams.

Productivity is not following a particular number on your clock. But it’s about starting your day with a fresh state of mind, with adequate energy level to deal with challenging tasks, which depends upon the quality of sleep you got earlier. So, pay attention to your body’s inner clock and rhythm and determine the time when your mind is fresh, most attentive to detail and productive.

Get to It Right Away!

When time is money, we are we are told by our project managers, bosses clients, even our spouses tell us to just hurry up and get down to something right away.

Likewise, sometimes we also abruptly start working on a project because of the following possible reasons: First, we start something right away because we are scared that the delay might be due to our own tendency to procrastinate. Second, the task seems ambiguous to us and we want to ‘figure it’ while working on it, so we decide to just get going. Third, we jump into a project clueless because we feel pressurized by the other person, your boss, team member, spouse, to start something.

This approach works actually works in many instances when your own procrastination might be the culprit. However, the lack of clarity and the influence of outside pressure (instead of inner motivation) can make the task daunting and the goal accomplishment and result to harder to achieve.

‘What’ you do is important, but ‘how’ you do it is equally important to accomplish your goals. So, instead of jumping into a task blindly, take out 10 minutes to brainstorm and to understand what you are required to do exactly and the best way of going about it.

How many times have you focused on perfecting certain aspects of the work only to discover later that they were not required in the first place!

In the rush to get started without understanding the ins and outs and without setting the targets, it is easy to lose your way.  Therefore, it’s equally important to understand what is required and also what is “not required”, so that you don’t end up wasting your precious time and energy on superfluous things.  

Likewise, how many times have you dived head first into a task to only discover that you don’t have the necessary tools and resources to reach your destinations.

Productivity isn’t just about doing things randomly or impulsively. It requires planning, prioritization, and sometimes even breaking tasks down into smaller steps for easier, efficient and result-oriented outcomes.

The Summary

In summary, while ambitious productivity tips like “Wake up earlier than the rest”, “Follow your Passion”, “Maintain a journal!”etc. may work as a motivational slogan in certain contexts, it’s often inadequate as one-size-fit all productivity advice. Such generic statements overlook the complexities of productivity, the context, needs and capabilities of each individual and create a culture of toxic productivity, stress and overwhelm.  This doesn’t mean that all productivity advice and tips are useless, it just means that you have to find which strategy works for you best, help you follow your passion and fulfill your obligations. When you understand what works for is a continuous process. It may take time and experimentation to discover what works best for you. So, stay patient, stay persistent, and celebrate your progress and small wins along the way.