🔋 The Humbling Quest to Get More Done

Let me guess: you planned on getting more stuff done in 2025 than you did in 2024, and so far, it's not going particularly well.

For all our differences, for all our disparate views and backgrounds, there's a universal urge to do more. Dishearteningly, that's typically matched with a universal overestimation of how much we actually can get done.

If we were to put it in the language of economics, the desire to get more done is inelastic — no matter the other variables, we always want to accomplish more (I only took Econ 101 — don't @ me if this description doesn't make sense).

It's humbling to admit that this quest to get more done is endless because we didn't get as much done as we thought we would. Will we ever learn?

On Staying Motivated to Get Things Done

How do we not lose steam when this happens?

At the top of the year, I taught one of my favorite sessions to one of my favorite groups of people. The student veteran national conference is always the first weekend of the new year, and it's a heck of way to dust off the break and plunge back into community-driven work.

The session is called How to Get Sh!t Done (sorry, Ma). Knowing this particular population, where explicit language is everywhere, I figured the conference organizers would be ok with me taking some creative license. It was well received when I first piloted the title and content in early 2024, and since then I've continued to iterate on the presentation every time I give it.

As a surprise to no one who reads this blog, the session isn't about hacks or shortcuts. It's as much about identity as it as about strategies to stay on task and set priorities. The more we understand ourselves, the more likely those strategies are to stick. Because the thing about hacks is that they are exactly that: ways to short circuit the full process that are unlikely to endure.

Methods to Optimize Attention & Time

Here's the deck I use. It's meant to spark conversation, so it's not overly detailed. Still, I suspect it could be helpful for those of you searching for a port in the storm of unproductivity.

Longtime readers will say a lot of similarity between this and the posts I draft here. Where connected, I'll link to the relevant post.

This starts with the key framing questions, and then moves into action-oriented steps.

You are more than your to-do list

Productivity does not equal self worth. In detaching the two, consider these questions:

• What makes you, you?
• What are you trying to be productive towards, and what what are you giving up by focusing on this particular thing?
• How are you measuring success, and how do you respond when you fail?

Work accomplished = intensity of focus x time

This is a wonderfully simple formula to keep in mind as you build and implement your system. As you run the equation, consider asking:

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• How can you focus, and what can you do if you’re struggling?
• How much time should you allocate to get something done?

Steps to building a system

After exploring the foundation with the questions above, I move to steps. While not foolproof, I've found in teaching others that these five steps below generally strike the right balance detailed enough to create meaningful change and simple enough to actually be implementable and sticky.

• Select your tools — analog, digital or hybrid
• Set your priorities — carving out time for the "important" tasks that aren't yet "urgent"
• Close your loops — handling those pesky cognitive loops that open when you're thinking about / trying to remember something
• Build your intentional schedule — making good use of calendars and to-do lists
• Own your attention — trimming notifications, let yourself be bored, and taking breaks

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I get to teach this again in a couple weeks, and I'm confident I'll come out of that session with more adjustments. And just writing this post has me thinking about more that I need to read, reflect on, and write about.

The quest to get things done is endless and humbling. But that doesn't mean it has to own us. Take charge by picking out what resonates with you from the list above, and give 'er a go. Drop me a line and let me know how it's going. Who knows, you may just end up being the reason I overhaul my system!

-Rye

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