For me, a lot comes down to that complicated "work/life balance". I need to make sure I get enough sleep, I get varieties of stimulation, I get enough time with the people I really love (love is a HUGE part of my life)... that I'm balanced. If the balance goes out of whack, if I overfocus on one thing, my broader productivity drops precipitously.<p>Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Every time you sprint, you reduce your marathon speed. Sprints wipe out energy reserves that need replenished. I'll bet if you look at the high-productivity people you admire, you rarely see them panicked against a hard deadline with impossible requirements. They don't get into those situations, because they know what it will do to their overall productivity.<p>Also? Success breeds success, and comfort with occasional failure breeds comfort with occasional failure. The biggest cause of procrastination and paralysis imho is fear of failure, of doing something wrong. Look at the billions of questions on internet forums of the "What is the best X for Y?" form. People won't try to do Y, because they don't have the "best" X. They fear that if they don't have the best X, they'll fail - which is in itself a magical belief that X is the source of success. It's not X that succeeds - it's I.<p>Really productive people also have good process. They're skilled at breaking down complex tasks into manageable pieces. And no, asking "What is the best process for maximum productivity?" will not get you there. Try processes, and see what happens. Refine by iteration.<p>Highly effective people are also very good at saying no. There's more interesting stuff to do, more demands on your time and resources, than anyone can possibly do. Learning to say no, quickly and firmly, is the best way to save your energy for the things that get a yes. Dabbling and dithering doesn't get work done. It wastes time and energy.<p>Wow, I should blog about this.
One other reason: they just aren't afraid to fail. I know a lot of people that want to do things, and do try, but immediately feel overwhelmed by the impossibility of it all. The most prolific creators I know realize failure is a pretty uneventful outcome: you just move on to some other interesting thing.
They just freaking do it. And it is not about quantity over quality. There are a lot of people who pretend they are busy and do not have time but in reality they are just postponing, procrastinating or killing their time by over investing in shipped goods with no direct benefit or simply wasting time.<p>If you are reading this and could be using this time for something more productive I suggest to close the tab. It doesn't matter what is written above or underneath this comment. At this point you are not shipping things and killing time. "But this comment thread is important!". No it's not. Close the tab. Right now. You can thank me later.
Someone I'd really like to point out is Brandon Sanderson. He's a prolific writer with an average of 2-3 books every year. He has been asked how he manages to write so much and at such quality (all his books regularly hit NYT bestseller lists), and his answers revolve around:<p>- He loves to write, more than ever; now that people are admiring his work.<p>- He regularly writes 2500 words/day. Every day. This isn't much, but becomes huge if done regularly.<p>- He often does little side-projects (often unplanned) that end up as published novellas, short-stories, or sometimes video-game tie-ins.<p>- His ideal plan is to do one big project (large epic sf book) and follow it up with a shorter YA novel.<p>- He has a huge list of books he plans to write (currently around 30-40 atleast) all in various stages of planning.<p>My favorite point is that he writes good _and_ fast, which is a very rare combination (see GRRM, for instance).
Some of the really productive people I know fall into either or both of two camps: 1) ruthlessly focused (often with understanding, supporting spouses who accept that they will enjoy only a small portion of their partner's time) and/or 2) sleep freaks who need only a few hours a night.<p>A friend of mine is the latter: We have about the same drive, intellect, and motivation, as far as I can tell from working together, from long talks over beer, etc. But he needs about 4 hours a night, I need 8-9. That gives him several extra days a week, compared to me. Even if he only takes advantage of "one day", that still puts him 20+% ahead of me.<p>I also know several people in camp #1, some of whom are on second or third spouses, very few of whom are still with original partners.<p>There is a third camp, the rarest of them all: Focused but balanced. They get a normal amount of sleep, switch from rest to work mode and back again immediately, and when in work mode are focused and productive the whole time. They are the ones I try to emulate, at least to some extent.
A single person can have periods of shipping so damn much, and others of not shipping a damn.<p>I apply a few tricks when I detect I am in a low productivity season (like right now, I hate to admit):<p>- Drop those projects or activities that are sucking time but are not really going anywhere<p>- Create weekly and daily TODO lists (sometimes on paper, others in Trelll)<p>- Be more disciplined about my daily TODO list: won't go to bed until the last item of today's list is done<p>- Monitor my computer usage (I use RescueTime for that)
Well, I've noticed that I have two very distinct modes that correspond quite closely to the Meyers Briggs judging/perceiving trait. INTP mode is open to new things, but unable to get anything done, and INTJ mode is closed off, but terribly effective.<p>To make real things with computers is actually a lot easier than deciding in which of the many possible ways you would like to make things with computers. You simply cannot let second-order concerns (shopping for tools) dominate first-order concerns (building things).<p>If you feel like you're in a rut, try solving some synthetic exercises that ask you to solve some simple string or integer array puzzles using <i>no</i> libraries.