What is this site?
The goal of How to Do Things is to help productivity-challenged people get enough done, on a daily basis, that they feel okay about themselves.
productivity-challenged adjective
Demonstrating unusual levels of difficulty at getting things done, possibly due to ADHD, anxiety, lack of motivation, or self-defeating habits
How much is enough?
Getting “enough” done means…
- you are regularly achieving personal goals
- you go to bed feeling accomplished most days
- you no longer feel like you’re drowning
- you aren’t regularly letting anyone down, including yourself
Are you “productivity-challenged?”
“Productivity-challenged” is a cheeky term for anyone who’s spent much of their life seemingly unable to get even the important things done. This person is used to being chronically behind, always reacting, never on top of things, surviving but not thriving.
The productivity-challenged person (PCP) might not think of themselves in those terms, but they definitely know there’s something wrong. It feels like there’s something you don’t get that everyone else gets. You see others advancing through life, year by year, while you improve your situation only very slowly. It feels like you’re living life on hard mode.
Yet you know you’re capable of more. You have talents and gifts, and big ideas, but you’re aware on some level that you’re not making great use of them. Something is in the way, at least right now. And you’re getting older.
Most PCPs are moderate to severe procrastinators. They know they’re talented and capable, but they have trouble getting themselves to act, at least before things become urgent. Many have ADHD (diagnosed or undiagnosed), anxiety, or motivation problems.
There are many ways to be productivity-challenged. What we all have in common is that we don’t have a great track record of making things happen.
You don’t have to wait. Get your tools now.
If you’re productivity-challenged, some of the following may describe you:
- You start a lot of things that you don’t finish
- You achieve personal goals only rarely
- You waste a lot of time, and you know it
- You can keep life together, but have trouble moving things forward
- You feel like you’re behind where you should be, in your career or personal life
- You’ve read a lot of productivity books, but they haven’t resulted in long-term change
- The only time you get a lot done is when a deadline is looming
- You’re amazed at how much some people get done
If this sounds like you, I have good news: you can do things too. You can turn the corner, and make your big ideas happen.
However, conventional productivity advice will not supply what you’ve been missing. To get ahead, you need to do things differently than most people.
Why most productivity advice hasn’t helped you
The first thing to know is that most productivity advice is written by natural doers – people for whom the doing part of productivity is straightforward. That’s why they focus on how to organize your workflow, identify high-leverage tasks, and free up time, in order to wring out another 10 or 20 percent from your already-productive workday.
They never tell you how to get yourself to do things, because natural doers have never had to figure that out. To them, completing tasks is as straightforward as walking. They assume you can just pick up your to-do list and start knocking things off, with whatever time you have. They only tell you how to optimize and prioritize your doing, rather than how to become someone who can just do things like that.
Classic productivity books like Deep Work and Getting Things Done are very useful to the right people, but they will not address your fundamental productivity challenges.
What you need to do first, if you are indeed productivity-challenged, is learn some basic techniques for getting yourself to do things. This site can give you a small arsenal of memorable, easy-to-learn tactics that allow you to make significant productivity gains immediately.
This is a vital point, so I’ll say it again: what productivity-challenged people need are simple, memorable tactics they can implement immediately — different ways of working, not just “trying harder.”
You certainly do not need a 250-page book written by a millionaire CEO. That will just become another pile of ideas you plan to implement later – more stuff on your to-do list to feel bad about.
No, you need quick and early successes. This is the essential How to Do Things strategy:
- Learn a simple technique
- Apply it right away (before you forget it)
- Get something done and feel good
- Repeat, adding simple tools to your toolbox one at a time
You can learn some of these techniques in just a few minutes, and start building an inner toolkit you can bring to bear on any task.
I can give you three easy ones to start with right away, with more to follow.
Make your move right now.
Subscribe to How to Do Things and learn three killer moves you can put to use right away.
Who writes this?
I’m David Cain, a writer from Canada, and I am definitely productivity-challenged. Life always felt like it was on hard mode. Almost everything I had to do for school or at work felt so complicated and painful to do, while people around me could seemingly just do them.
At age 40, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which explained a lot. Meanwhile, I had developed my own ways of doing things. Since 2009, I’ve been writing about them, among other topics, on my blog Raptitude. I still do, and for twelve of those years I had no clue I had ADHD. Meanwhile I’d become my own boss and do what I love for a living.
Many of my readers resonated specifically with my writing on “how to get yourself to do things,” so I built a site specifically for the productivity-challenged crowd, knowing there are millions more of us out there.