How I Stay Productive 98% Of Every Day (Without Burning Out)

I used to spend most of my day procrastinating, wanting to be productive but never being able to bring myself to do the work or focus for long enough to get anything done and when I did get bursts of motivation to do the work, I would always end up “burning out”

Eventually, I had enough and started diving deep into the science of focus, productivity, and burn out - now, I never procrastinate, I have laser-like focus, I get more done in 1 day than most people get done in 1 week and I haven’t burned out in over 2 years.

So in this week’s Self-Mastery Letter, I’m going to go over how I stay productive 98% of every day without burning out.

Part 1: Productivity Foundations

If you want to be productive and get anything done, you need a strong foundation to build upon.

If you try to build on sand, you’ve nothing to support you so you’ll never be productive, and burning out will only be a matter of time.

Doing The Right Things

I realised the traditional view of productivity where you just focus on getting more done was flawed.

I would often get a lot done but I never got what mattered done and so I never made progress - you can’t call that productivity, that’s being busy.

So I started to view productivity to be about getting the right things for my goals done to a high quality, in an efficient and effective way.

Instead of focusing on getting more done, I started focusing on getting the right things done.

But this meant I needed to know what the right things for my goals were, I needed to know what tasks were essential to complete if I wanted to make any progress.

The best part about this was that this made the work I had to do meaningful.

Instead of just cramming my day with tasks that didn’t matter just so I could avoid the work that did, I was facing the work that moved me toward my goals, and since the goals I had were meaningful goals that I truly wanted to achieve, that made the work that I had to do to get there meaningful.

It was a reason for me to be productive.

Often, people can’t be productive because the work they’re trying to do has no meaning (or at least they don’t consciously understand the meaning behind it) so they don’t have a reason to do it, they don’t have a reason to overcome the friction of starting and finishing hard things.

But when you shift your view of productivity to be about doing the right things and not doing more things, this changes.

I stopped focusing on doing more and cramming my day with meaningless tasks and instead figured out the 1-3 tasks that I needed to do, with no exception, every single day that would move me toward my goals and focused on completing them to as high a quality as I could in the most efficient and effective way I could.

Planning My Day

But there’s a major problem with productivity, no matter how you view it.

If you don’t start the work, if you procrastinate, you can’t be productive.

And one of the most common reasons for procrastination is a lack of clarity - think about it like driving a car, if your windshield is fogged up and dirty and it’s not clear, you’re going to drive incredibly slowly or you won’t drive at all, but if your windshield is nice and clear, if you have clarity, you’ll drive with no problems.

In the context of getting stuff done, specificity creates clarity - if you’re not specific on what you need to do and when you need to do it, you’re leaving everything up to chance and in the moment decision making.

So I started to get specific with what I needed to do each day and when I needed to do it - I started planning every single hour of my day in a pocket notebook.

This done 2 things;

• Massively boosted my productivity

• Prevented overwhelm and burn out

By listing out all the tasks I had to do each day, from the important tasks for my goals to going to the gym to doing groceries, I knew exactly what needed done and then by assigning all my tasks to a particular hour of the day, I knew exactly when I was doing each task.

I was specific on what needed done and when, creating clarity and clearing my mind.

I no longer had to make a decision every 30 or 60 minutes about what I’m doing next whilst trying to remember all of what needs done, which only leads to you putting off the important work that’s hard and challenging.

Everything was laid out in a clear, structured and organised order of priority, massively reducing how overwhelmed I felt.

When you’re trying to wing your day, and mentally keep track of everything you have to do and decide on the spot what you’re going to do, you’re adding unnecessary stress and pressure to your life, which will make it harder to manage your mental and physical states and massively increase the chances of you burning out.

By planning my day, I wasn’t trying to get everything done and wing my day, I was following a purposeful structure for my day.

Prioritising Flow

By planning my day, I was able to dedicate specific time to doing the right things for my goals.

I wasn’t putting them off because it was clear when I had to do them and since they were meaningful tasks, I had a reason to stick to my schedule and follow through.

When it comes to doing these important tasks, you want to do them to as high a quality as you possibly can - because the higher the quality of the work, the better the results you’ll get per unit of output of the work.

I used to do these important tasks using a Pomodoro timer where you work for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break, but I found that this way of working was massively flawed.

You see, you get your best quality work done in the most productive way when you’re in a deep state of focus and flow.

But it takes between 15 and 30 minutes to enter flow depending on you and the task, so when you use a Pomodoro timer, you’re never truly focused.

You’re taking a break as soon as you enter flow, breaking your state of focus.

A task that takes you 90 minutes to do using a Pomodoro timer, could be done in 45 minutes when you work with the goal of flow - a Pomodoro timer, creates work and delays you finishing it, increasing your chances of burnout, decreasing the quality of your work and how fast you get it done.

I used to use a Pomodoro timer because I liked the idea of taking a break every 25 minutes and not having to work for too long, but that’s the easy option.

Entering flow can be tough. The first 15-25 minutes of your brain warming up to enter deep focus creates a sense of agitation and discomfort but it’s a price that’s worth paying for the benefits you experience when working in a flow state.

When I stopped using a Pomodoro timer and started to prioritise deep focus in my work blocks, I ended up getting more done, to a higher quality, in less time and I ended up enjoying the damn work - making me more productive and less likely to burn out.

Each time I sit down to work, I turn my phone off, close everything on my computer not used for work, set a 90 minute timer, and get to it.

Instead of avoiding focus, I leaned into it.

Part 2: Systemising Productivity

When you’re chasing a goal you’ll find a lot of your tasks are repetitive and you’ll need to do them either daily or weekly.

Since they’re repetitive, they’re predictable and hence, you can be much more productive if you systemise the tasks and streamline the process of doing them.

Automations 

When it comes to systemising tasks, I go down 1 of 2 paths.

The first path is for tasks that aren’t important but still need to be done.

These tasks I automate using AI, software, outsourcing, or a combination.

Since they need to be done, I can’t avoid these tasks but they don’t create progress and hence, my time and energy is much better spent focusing on what does create progress, so by automating these tasks as much as possible, I free up my time and energy for focusing on what matters.

Systems

The second path is for important tasks that create progress.

These tasks are systemised so that I can limit decisions, remove guesswork and maintain a consistent standard of work.

Systems can get incredibly advanced and complicated, but I’m a fan of keeping things simple and so every system I build starts and often finishes with an SOP - a standard operating procedure.

An SOP involves you writing out every step you take to complete a certain task, this way when it comes to doing that task, you don’t have to make decisions or use guesswork, you follow the steps you’ve laid out in your SOP.

Some systems can incorporate automations such as AI or software for certain steps, but every system has to start with an SOP.

The best part about systems is that no matter how simple your system is, simply by having it you’ll speed up your process and maintain a consistent standard of work - boosting your productivity massively.

2nd Brain

Systems for streamlining your work are essential, but most people overlook systems for managing their life.

Your brain has a limited amount of bandwidth, if you’re trying to remember everything that doesn’t matter right now but matters in the future, you won’t have any room to focus on what matters now, ruining your productivity and you’ll feel overwhelmed and potentially burn out.

This was a problem I faced all the time.

I was constantly trying to remember future plans and events and remember projects and next steps all in my head, so when it came time for me to work I felt like I didn’t have anything left to give to my work because I was wasting so much mental energy trying to remember everything in my life.

So I decided to make a 2nd brain or a life management system.

This is a simple system designed to help me track progress on longer-term projects, build systems for my work, track longer-term plans, and note down ideas.

With 2nd brains you can get incredibly complicated, but I always found the more complicated systems to have too much friction to using them and so I never used any of them for more than a week.

That’s why mine is incredibly bare-bones, simple, and easy to use - I needed to guarantee that I would use it and that meant I had to reduce the friction to using it.

By creating my 2nd brain the goal was for me to focus on what matters right now and not what matters next week or next month, freeing up my cognitive bandwidth for doing high-quality work and being more productive.

Part 3: Energy Management

Most people think burnout is caused by trying to do too much - it’s not.

Burnout is caused by an inability to manage your mental and physical states sufficiently.

You can work as hard and as long as you want IF you’re able to manage your mental and physical states enough to match your workload - of course after a certain point this becomes impossible and different people have different stress tolerances.

A lot of what we’ve covered, such as planning your day, prioritising flow, and using a 2nd brain, I designed specifically to help me manage my mental states and reduce overwhelm so that I wouldn’t burn out and could be as productive as possible, but if you’re neglecting 3 specific areas, burnout becomes inevitable, no matter how much or how little you’re working.

Nutrition

Most people underestimate nutrition when it comes to being productive, but when you understand the importance of energy to being productive, nutrition becomes paramount.

You are what you eat.

If you eat crap foods full of cheap carbs and sugars, your energy will be at the mercy of those cheap carbs and sugars and will be both unreliable - full of peaks and troughs - and low.

If you try to push your mind to its limits (which any piece of high quality work requires you to do) and be productive with low energy, it’s like driving a car on empty - you won’t get far.

When I started to prioritise eating clean, whole foods for at least 90% of my calories and getting 1 gram of protein per lb of bodyweight, I found I felt so much better throughout my day.

I could wake up and work without crashing and without feeling fatigued.

My energy wasn’t unreliable because I wasn’t filling my body with crap that causes your energy levels to be volatile and my recovery was so much better thanks to eating more protein - my fuel tank was full, I could get more done, be more productive and I found it easier to do.

Sleep 

But regardless of how good your nutrition is, if you slack on this second area, you’re screwed.

The most important aspect of recovery, both mentally and physically is sleep.

Sleep is foundational for energy and health, so skipping sleep is like taking the damn fuel tank out of the car - you’ll not get anywhere and you’ll burn out even if you do nothing all day.

I used to be big into the whole “sleep when you’re dead” mentality and not care about my sleep at all but it was a massive reason, as much as you obviously shouldn’t rely on motivation, that I never felt motivated to do the work and why I burned out so much.

So over the past few years, I’ve made high quality sleep one of my top priorities.

I get 8 hours no matter what, I don’t go on my phone within an hour of going to bed and instead read a book, and I get sunlight in the morning - or at least when I can because Northern Ireland doesn’t get much sun haha.

And even after a few days of focusing on improving my sleep, I felt like had so much more energy, I felt like a new man and as if I had the fuel tank back in my car.

Training

Now in the short term, immediately after training, it can lower your energy levels, and this is why I personally train in the afternoon after I’ve done all my important cognitive work for the day.

But in the longer term, consistent training and lifting weights will increase your energy levels, train you to do hard things, and manage more stress - all of which will help you do the work that you know you need to do, be more productive, and prevent burn out.

Training is like increasing the size of the fuel tank in your car, if you train you have a greater capacity.

Now I never had to optimise this part because lifting weights was how I go into self-improvement in the first place, I’ve been training since I was 17, I’ve won a British Weightlifting Championship and a few other things.

But if you’re not training and you start to train, or if you do train but you’re inconsistent and you half ass it and you start to take it seriously, every area of your life will improve.

You’ll look better, you’ll feel more confident, you’ll command more respect from other people, you’ll have more energy, you’ll be able to tolerate higher stress and workloads and you’ll be able to be productive and not burn out.

So lift weights at least 3x a week, hit every muscle group at least once per week and each week progressively overload with the goal of lifting more weight or doing more reps.

Watch your damn life transform in front of your eyes.

- Ross

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