You’re Not Unproductive, You Simply Lack Direction.
Recently this summer I took a cabin trip with a few friends.
I had just finished a great week of productivity, I was making a ton of videos, editing photos, and making progress on future projects I have lined up to share with you guys.
But upon returning, I felt a strange lack of motivation or willingness to do anything.
And it’s not like the trip was super draining or tiring - I’d only left for a few days.
But the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after, I just didn’t feel like doing my normal stuff.
I was lazy, didn’t have energy, and really just wanted to lay in bed all day.
You’ve probably felt some form of this before.
And the temptation you and I might have would be to berate ourselves into being productive.
To force oneself or exercise our discipline to get back on track.
I’ve done this before, but this time, I knew better.
I knew the answer was not to force myself to be productive, but to allow myself to settle back into the rhythm of things.
And it’s not that I was unproductive - I simply lacked direction.
You see, the thing about trips is that they are milestones in our lives.
Going someplace new, seeing and experiencing different things, all carry a weight to them.
And you’re not the same person coming back as when you left.
As Heraclitus said,
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
So as I adjusted back to normal life, and slowly allowed myself to become productive again, instead of forcing myself to, I realized a few important things.
Today, I’m going to share those with you to help you get things going again.
Let’s begin.
Me being unproductive...
Why It Happens
Routines are important.
They are part of our daily lives and they keep us doing the things we need to do without thinking much about it.
Regardless of what you do, having a good routine suited towards your temperament can make getting shit done much easier.
But as with everything in life, there is a caveat.
The main issue with routines is that you can become stuck on autopilot for a long long time.
You can spend the majority of your days just going through the motions and not really living life.
That’s a problem.
Because it leads to a lot of people “waking up” in their 40s and 50s realizing their entire life just flashed them by, and now they’ve got a “midlife crisis”.
So something people do to mitigate this is taking a vacation.
A week or two every few months throughout the year to travel somewhere, get away from work, and live life a little has become a understandable need in our lives.
It allows to take a break from daily life, look at it from a bigger picture, and allow us to come back more energized and motivated to work.
The caveat of a vacation however, is it breaks our routines.
The routine we’ve spent the entire year establishing and getting used to.
The good habits we’ve built around work, diet, and exercise.
These have all been broken, and we can come back from our trips feeling a bit lost.
The autopilot is turned off, the navigation system is shut down, we are confused.
This is being pulled out of our productivity loops - and it’s normal.
It’s the cost of taking a break or stepping away from our daily lives in an effort to mix things up, do other things, and enjoy life.
However, it’s important to remind ourselves that this happens, and not to expect to come back and be just as productive as we were when we left.
Let me give you an example to help better understand this.
Your Vehicle of Life
Think about it like this.
Imagine you’ve got a car - this is your vehicle of life.
It takes you places you want to go, it covers the distance, it accomplishes your goals for you.
You can think of this like the routines you’ve established, the habits you’ve put in place, the systems you’ve set up around you.
It’s as simple as brushing your teeth every morning and night or working out every day.
These habits all make up your car, or “vehicle of life”.
So while habits, systems, and routines make it easier to get to where we want to go, they still require two essential components: fuel and a driver.
You can think of “fuel” as a combination of motivation, inspiration, anger, and other emotions.
The stuff that gets you to do things.
And if you’re eco friendly you’ve got healthier fuel like positive emotions driving your actions.
The driver is you: both your emotional and rational mind.
You’re the person who establishes the destination (goal), orients the car, controls the brake, and has a foot on the gas.
All three components are important because they dictate how you get to where you wanna go in life.
And you can have the nicest vehicle but with crappy driving, you’ll reach your destination in pieces, or run out of gas before you get there.
Plus, you could be a great driver but if you’re using the wrong fuel (like negative emotions) to drive your productivity, it won’t be sustainable.
So what’s the point of all this?
What am I trying to get you to understand?
The analogy I’m trying to draw here is that life is a road trip.
We are all driving somewhere on the highway of life and making stops here and there to enjoy the view every now and then.
And every once in a while we’ll find someplace nice, spend a few days or weeks before moving on.
Those are our vacations, breaks, and resets.
Those are goals, checkpoints, and major life events.
You can think of them like the next big thing you’re racing to: a wedding, a college degree, a trip to a different country.
These are important things that make up a majority of how we remember our time here.
And it’s often we’re so focused on this big event, we forget that there’s still life after the event.
It’s not like the event happens and life is rainbows and sunshine for the rest of eternity.
No - there’s still stuff to do.
And before we can get back on the highway, we need to establish a new destination.
Or else how will we know where we’re going?
You see, that’s the problem.
I took this pit stop, had a little break, came back, and found myself lost.
Why?
Because I didn’t chart a new course.
I didn’t establish a new destination of where I’m going on this next path in life.
And because of that it felt hard to be productive, restart those systems, get everything going again, because I didn’t know where I was going.
This is why the great stoic philosopher Seneca wrote:
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
Meaning a clear direction and destination is more important than anything.
Because we could have the entire world working for us but if it’s not oriented towards the place we wanna go, it might not be a good thing.
Therefore, destinations must not only be established, but reestablished.
Like the Heraclitus quote we touched on earlier, (no man steps in the same river twice) our destination changes all the time.
Why?
Because we as people are always changing.
We become different people based on the experiences we have and we might find out later that we don’t actually want the thing we once wanted.
And therefore we must reestablish destinations all the time to make sure it’s still in alignment with who we are and where we want to go.
So maybe you’re feeling lost right now.
Maybe you’ve just come back from a trip, maybe you’ve just accomplished a really big goal, maybe you’ve had a major shift in your life.
Don’t try to be super productive.
Sure go through the motions, do something just to keep your mind and body healthy.
But don’t think or worry to much about how productive you’re being and how much you’re getting done.
Take action, because action can spur motivation, but at the same time don’t overthink it.
Right now, your primary job is to figure out where you want to go next.
Do that, and everything else will take care of itself.
Lets talk about that.
Restarting Our Routine / Picking a New Direction
So this is what we now know:
Life is a road trip.
It’s driven by our vehicle of life, controlled by us the driver, and powered by our fuel, or the systems, habits, and routines we have in place.
We are bouncing between different destinations: major life events, goals, and milestones.
After reaching a certain checkpoint we might feel lost because to get back on the highway means to pick a new destination.
Because if you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t drive anywhere even if you have all the fuel in the world.
Similarly, even if you thought you had goals established, things you wanted to do, you still have to check up on them now, to see if those things are still accurate for the new person you are.
Which means reevaluating, reestablishing, and reconfirming old goals.
Or maybe changing goals and directions in life.
Picking a new direction may mean abandoning an old one.
Ask yourself:
“What do I want to do now?”
“What’s next?”
“Do I still want to do this?”
“Is this still a good goal?”
Be as honest and as clear as you can.
And write those things down if you need something tangible to work with.
Look at life in the next few months instead of years, and establish a new checkpoint.
It could be the next trip or milestone or major life event.
Whatever it is, that becomes the new anchor or pit stop.
Then, ask yourself what you have to do to get from here to there.
Or what you’d like to do to get from here to there.
Once direction is set, things will make sense, and productivity and movement will occur on its own.
You wont feel lost anymore because by definition, you know where you’re going.
And you wont feel unproductive because everything you do will be in an effort to get you from Point A to Point B.
There’s a greater purpose working behind the scenes to keep your psyche intact.
Remember, you’re not unproductive - you simply lack direction.
Obviously there will still be work you have to do and not all of it is going to be easy - but at least you know where you’re going.
Another handy thing to keep in mind: rebuild momentum from zero.
Instead of trying to get back on track as soon as possible and be as productive as you once were before, do 1% of that.
Start your exercise routine, lower the reps and sets to as small as you think is necessary and rebuild from there.
And the next day, do a little more.
And the next, do a little more.
Restart your momentum with the 1% a day framework we’ve talked about in other videos and you should be moving quite fast sooner than you realize.
Even if your body and mind feel fine, try it out.
It’s important to have that feeling of things snowballing, life working in your favor, and the wind pushing you from behind.
And this is a simple way we can build that for ourselves.
So I hope this was useful to you.
This was extremely useful for me because I had to sort of write this out for myself as I was dealing with this exact problem.
And after doing so, I myself feel much more confident and assured about where I’m going next.
If this helped, share this with a friend who you think might need this.
Also, if you like photobooks, check out my latest zine “The Sinking Sun”.
Thanks for reading, have a great day.
