A Positive Mindset in 2022 - Positivity and productivity

 A Positive Mindset for Productivity in 2022

Or: How to keep your motivation fires burning in 2022

This is the second in a series of blog posts about productivity and motivation.

 

I recently put out a digital reflection journal for 2022 (grab a copy here for $2.00!), designed based on my own experiences with productivity and what truly motivated me as I tried to move forward with my goals and the tasks that needed completing. To compliment its release, this series of blog posts will share my lessons learned over the past handful of years as I have struggled to create a method of keeping track of my productivity that helps me feel motivated to keep moving forward.

In the first post, I talked about defining productivity and why that was an important step for me. It helped me understand what I specifically needed in order to feel satisfied with my day - and feel productive. I view the connection between productivity and motivation as kind of cyclical. If you feel productive, you feel more motivated to keep going, which in turn means you accomplish more things, and you feel productive, which makes you feel motivated, and so on. 

When you get things done, you feel good and positive about yourself. 

But what happens when you don't get to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish?

 

The Connection Between Positivity and Productivity

It's easy to be positive when you're on a roll, getting things done, and feeling pretty good about your progress. It's much harder to be positive when you feel like you're not doing enough, or you didn't accomplish something that was important, or you aren't doing as much as you used to be able to.

How do you stay positive when you're unhappy with your productivity? 

Well, I have my own way, and I'm going to share it with you in case it works for you, as well.

Here are the tools you're going to need: 

• grace
• understanding
• flexibility

To be clear, positive productivity does not mean having an always-on, always-working mentality. It doesn't mean that you can't expect to have down times, and it certainly doesn't mean that the natural ebbs and flows of your motivation are to be ignored in favor of burning yourself out. That kind of productivity can be unsustainable in the long run. 

We can't always do what we want to do. Life gets in the way, things get turned upside-down, and chaos can ensue. In all the change, it can be hard to keep up with the things you want to accomplish. And, sometimes, it's an internal thing. Maybe we procrastinate a bit too much, or we get a little distracted with other things, or we don't feel up to the task on certain days. 

You can think of the kind of positive mindset that I am suggesting you apply to your productivity as more of a reactionary positivity. In other words - what you do when you don't feel like you're doing enough, or getting things done.

Here's where those three tools come in handy.

Grace and Understanding in Positive Productivity

Having grace means having courtesy and good will. Your intentions are good - you want to complete certain tasks, presumably because they will benefit you and possibly others around you. You go into these tasks completely expecting to get them done by a certain date and time. 

But say, for example, that you have a task you want to begin and complete by the end of the week. You think it's pretty reasonable as a time frame, and you feel confident that you can complete it within that time. Only... the week ends, and for whatever reason, you're still not done. You've still got work to do to complete that task.

What happens when something unavoidable comes up? What happens when you've underestimated the time it takes to accomplish a task? Will you beat yourself up about it?

Allowing yourself to feel negatively about the fact that something was not completed in the manner that you wish it was due to unavoidable circumstances isn't productive. Instead, be graceful with yourself, and understanding. Have the courtesy to cooperate with yourself - to help yourself, and allow yourself to grow from these results and experience them in a positive light. That is what it means to have grace.

Like Morpheus says in The Matrix, "What happened happened, and could not have happened any other way." You can't turn back time. You can't undo what you did. You can only learn from it and move forward. 

That understanding - that moving forward and trying to do better in the future - is vital to your continued growth and development. Now you know that that particular kind of task may take more effort than you'd previously thought, so next time, you can adjust your expectations when you get started with a similar task. While it feels like a failure or a mistake, it's only a setback, and probably not as big of an issue as you might think.

To clarify, it's okay to feel a bit disappointed or a bit frustrated. You're putting energy and time and effort into your tasks, and when you realize that they're going to need more input than you originally thought, it can be a little disheartening. But these emotions shouldn't linger. They shouldn't be allowed to fester into a negative mindset that makes you feel incapable, lazy, or downtrodden.

If you always allow yourself to be stuck feeling miserable and frustrated that you didn't accomplish something by a specific deadline, you create a habitual reaction in your mind that doesn't allow for learning from one's experiences. 

The Critical Role of Flexibility in Productivity

So, you've given yourself grace and understanding. You allow yourself to accept that this didn't work out the way you wanted it to, and you make note of this experience so that moving forward you can try to be more accurate in your planning and expectations. (Spoiler alert: it's never going to be perfect. Things always go a bit differently to what we expect. Such is the nature of life! All the more reason to have a more positive mindset towards your productivity when things don't go according to expectations!)

Now, this is where flexibility begins to play a critical role. How much flexibility do you have in your day-to-day? Are things set into a rigid structure from the get-go, or are you able to create a flow that allows you to move things around as needed?

In my case, I work from home as a writer and currently offer freelance services like editing, proofreading, writing guidance, and digital workbook creation (services page forthcoming). I have almost full control over how I'll plan my day, what I want to work on during a day, and how to prioritize my projects. More importantly, I have almost full control over my own deadlines. If I create an end-of-month deadline for a project and can't complete it by that time, I can easily readjust - flexibility! - and give myself another two weeks, or however much time I think I'll need in addition to what I've already spent on that project.

If you're working with deadlines that are set externally, either by a client or a boss or a teacher, allow yourself to be organized but human. If you simply can't get something done by a certain date, communicate. Let them know. Most everyone will understand, and if going over the deadline is an issue for them, then you can work something out. 

(On a professional note, every working professional and project manager knows that having an additional cushion built into your timeline is critical, since setbacks happen, and things do invariably end up taking longer than expected. If you are working on a project or task, make sure to work in an additional 20% time cushion, or more/less as needed. This can help you build flexibility and breathing room into your projects and tasks, saving you the stress and frustration of feeling like you've gotta hustle because that iron-clad deadline is going to otherwise spell your professional doom. Which - I assure you - it probably does not.)

If you're a full-time employee or if you work full days and can't quite find a way to work flexibility into your off-work hours, it's important to understand your limitations. How much time do you have at the end of the day? How much of it will you realistically use to work or do chores, and how much of it will you need to rest? (Because - let's be honest, rest is vital and a form of productivity on its own! You are doing something that will benefit your mental and physical health - so, make a note to yourself right now that rest and entertainment are 100% important things to accomplish for your own health, much like working out or being social. These are not moments of wasted time.) 

Understanding how much time you have to work with during the day will also help you set your expectations. If you feel overwhelmed, communicate with anyone who is keeping you accountable (like a teacher, or a boss, or a colleague) and let them know. Communication can often provide you with extra flexibility you didn't know you could have, but it's essential to try.

Flexibility creates a less-stress approach to productivity. It creates a healthier, more sustainable productivity flow. If you didn't finish a task today, maybe you can finish it tomorrow, or the day after. If a task has taken you all week and you're still only halfway through, give yourself another week. Don't burn yourself out trying to reach for some perfect modicum of productivity that is highly unsustainable and completely unhealthy. That's not what we're here for. 

Now that I've talked a bit about what the elements of a positive mindset towards productivity are and how they work, in the next post in this series, I'm going to be talking about how we can manage the ebbs and flows of our motivation, which in my opinion is intrinsically linked to healthy productivity.

Let's do the best we can to make 2022 a healthy productive year!

~⭐~

Grab the 2022 Reflection & Productivity Journal here for $2.00! Try out a full-month sample free here!

Check out my psychological thriller Apartment. Add it to your TBR on Goodreads!

Looking for a writing prompt workbook? Check out 101 Writing Prompts.