As one is wont to do this time of year, I’ve been reflecting on everything I accomplished, what I didn’t achieve but hoped to, and how I can do better next year.
Yes, 2020 was an absolute shitstorm. But — and I realize the privilege that comes with this statement —it was a good year for me. I didn’t lose anybody I love (though I did lose my job), my and my family’s wellbeing have not been put on the line, and I’ve had the most productive year since graduate school.
I won’t bore you with a comprehensive tally of my achievements, but I will give you some context as to what I mean when I say 2020 was a productive year for me:
I had a baby
I published my first book
I wrote seven articles for Wit & Delight
I launched a weekly email
I read 42 books
I wrote 23,573 words in my novel-in-progress
In analyzing how I accomplished everything above, I’ve identified some trends that contributed to each of them. Here are five takeaways from my productive year. Use them, tweak them, and make 2021 your best year
You need to know what you want
This is the first step to achieving anything of importance. If you don’t know what you’re going after, how will you know when you get there? Don’t let this overwhelm you, it can be as simple as a list of things that are important to you. For example, for years I had a piece of paper with the following four words on it hanging on my mirror:
reading, writing, travel, yoga
These are my hobbies. These are me. They are the things that make me feel sad when I don’t make time for them. Since writing the list I’ve gotten married and had two children, so I’ve added a couple of things to it, but these four things remain important to me and so I work toward them as much as possible.
Unfortunately, travel has been out of the cards this year. But — and this is a big one — the absence of one thing makes more space for others. So all of the time and money I’ve saved on not traveling has been funneled into the other things that matter to me. And since I’m crystal clear on what is important to me, when it comes to the end of the year and I reflect on what I’ve accomplished, I can confidently say I never lost sight of what I care about, therefore I spent an adequate amount of time on it.
Habit tracking is the ultimate tool
If you learn one thing from this, let it be the power of habit tracking. I cannot say enough about it. I started tracking my habits in November of 2019 and haven’t missed a day since — and I plan to track them in perpetuity.
In the simplest terms, habit tracking is when you write out your habits and track each day that you do them. After one month of tracking your habits, you can really begin to understand where you spend your time and, equally as important, where you don’t. This allows you to recalibrate and redistribute your time amongst that which you really value. When you have to check in on your habits nightly, you’re not only holding yourself accountable, but you are reminding yourself of the direction you intend to go. So when you go day after day after day not doing woodwork or running or creating a side hustle, you are confronted with a decision: either change your focus so that you spend more time doing the habit, or come to terms with the fact that you lack the dedication needed to do it. This awareness positions you to be able to have a productive year.
For more on habit tracking, here’s an analysis after my first year.
You have time, you just need to set it aside
One of the most common questions I get is, how do you have the time to read so much? The answer is simple: I make the time. The popular saying goes that we all have the same amount of time as Beyoncé. And while she has the money and people to help her with everything, the saying is true: we all have 24 hours in our days. It’s how we spend those 24 hours that matters. If reading a lot of books matters to you, you’ll find the time to do it. If CrossFit or barre or yoga matter to you, you’ll find the time to do them. This goes for every single thing you want to achieve. I know it can be tough, but for everything that matters to you — really matters, matters enough to make your habit tracking list — you can find the time.
Here, I wrote about 10 habits that help me read 40+ books per year if you need some encouragement.
Batching your work helps those with time constraints
I write in fits and starts, and that’s because I have two young children who take up a lot of my time and energy. So when I have 20 minutes of downtime (like right now as I write this), I don’t want to waste any time trying to figure out what to do. Instead, I determine ahead of time what I will work on each day of the week, creating “batches” or themes, and when I have any amount of free time, I dive into whatever it is I’ve dedicated that day to. This process has increased my productivity immensely. Here’s a deeper explanation of how it works.
Sometimes you need to pave your own way
My second-biggest accomplishment this year was independently publishing my children’s book (my first was birthing my son Enzo). When I found myself writing a sweet little story that I loved, I decided I wanted to do something with it. So I pitched it to a publishing house (just one, which is not how it works), then decided to take publishing into my own hands. I could have tried to find an agent and waited and waited until a publishing house accepted me, but instead, I chose to publish it myself. And after taking matters into my own hands, I can now proudly say that I published my first book in 2020.
I chronicled the entire process here. As you’ll see, it took a lot of work, a lot of money — money which I am still trying to earn back so I can break even — and a lot of dedication. But by paving my own way, I was able to achieve one of my dreams. And the hard work I’ve put into it has made it all the more meaningful.
These takeaways are not new, not surprising, not revolutionary. But they are game-changers and they will help you be more productive next year. You just have to know what you want and want it bad enough.
Onward and upward in the new year!
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