Ever since I was a kid, I loved the idea of working from home as a writer. I always thought it would be my dream job because I could do work I found fulfilling while still hanging out in my pajamas.

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And in 2016, I finally made that dream happen. And like all things in life, it was not as magical or as easy as I expected it would be.

For one thing, I learned it’s incredibly hard to hold yourself accountable when you’re working from home. How do you stay on track when you don’t have a boss demanding that you finish something?

5 Important Lessons About Productivity

I’ve never been someone who is particularly organized or good at planning. Honestly, my default is just to wing it. (Spoiler alert: winging it isn’t a very effective way to get anything done.)

So once I started freelancing, I suddenly found myself with numerous clients and due dates to juggle. My old way of doing things did not work anymore and I needed to find a new solution.

I’ve spent the last three years trying to learn everything I can about productivity. I did end up learning a lot, and many of these lessons really took me by surprise.

1. Be honest with yourself

Productivity is about so much more than just checking off items on a to-do list. It’s really about developing the ability to understand and -- most importantly -- be honest with yourself.

I would argue that chronic procrastination is really just chronic dishonesty.

For instance, how many times have you caught yourself saying, “Well, I would really love to do (fill in the blank) but I just don’t have the time right now.” We’ve all said some version of that phrase at some point, right?

The problem with saying things like that is that they’re dishonest. Of course, you have the time to do that thing, you’re just avoiding it for some reason.

I know a big problem for me was that for a long time, I would continually set goals that I didn’t really want to achieve. I would set goals that I thought would be impressive to other people but that I didn’t personally care about all that much.

This was something I struggled with for years in regards to running. In my late teens and early twenties, I ran a couple marathons and about a dozen half-marathons. I was really proud of this and being a long distance runner became part of my identity.

So after I had kids, I assumed I would immediately pick this habit back up, but I never really did. Yet it never failed, every New Year’s I would set a resolution to run a half marathon at some point in the coming year.

And yet it never happened. So then I would feel very guilty and tell myself I was being lazy and that I just needed to get motivated.

The truth is, I wasn’t lazy at all. Running 13 miles just wasn’t very important to me. And the more time I spent trying to convince myself that I should, the less time I had to discover what I actually did want to be doing.

So my advice is if you have something that you have been chronically procrastinating on, ask yourself why. You don’t have to like the answer but you do need to be honest.

2. Eliminate the non-essentials

If you want to accomplish any goal, you need to eliminate all the non-essentials. Don’t work on anything that doesn’t have to be done in order for you to reach your goals.

I’ll give you a personal example of what I mean by this.

For years, I DIYed my website design. In the beginning, this was mostly out of necessity because I couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it for me.

But because I did it myself, I could never get my website to look the way I wanted it to. I’m a writer, not a graphic designer. It never failed, I would spend hours and hours working on it and fiddling with it, and I could never get it to look just right.

Finally, I realized that my freelance writing clients didn’t really care how my website looked. They cared a lot more about my writing samples. So I found a template I liked, and moved on with my life.

At that point in my life, having the perfect logo and website design was a non-essential. It was distracting me from finding new clients, and adding new work to my portfolio.

When I decided to start this blog, I knew that my design and branding would make a big difference in how freelancers related to me. But I also knew that my time was better spent writing content.

So I hired someone to design my website for me. Freeing up this task has allowed me to focus on creating lots of blog posts and free guides for my site.

3. Recognize when you are reaching the point of diminishing returns

When I was in my early twenties, I worked at a running store and I worked with some serious runners.

And when I say serious runners, I mean people who tried out for the Olympic marathon timed trials and actually qualified. We’re talking about guys who could run a full marathon in less time than it took me to run half that distance.

I remember working with one such individual one day and he told me that he ran 100 miles a week. I was flabbergasted.

100 miles in a week? I ran 30 miles on a good week!

Now, I don’t know the specifics of his training schedule or anything like that. I simply share this story to explain that somewhere along the way, I developed the belief that doing more was always better.

If you run for 30 minutes, great!

So if you run for two hours then that’s four times as great, right?

I tried to apply this strategy to my work as well. I would sit at my desk and try to write for six or seven hours straight and it was always a disaster.

I would do okay for a little while and then eventually, I’d find myself binge-watching YouTube videos, wondering where I went wrong.

Over time, I started to notice a pattern emerge. I was almost always super focused for the first two or three hours of my workday and then my focus would suddenly drop off.

So finally one day, when I noticed myself losing focus I stopped and went for a walk. I came back to my work 30 minutes later and was amazed to find that I was actually more productive.

See, what happened before was I was reaching the point of diminishing returns. At some point, if you just keep pushing harder and harder, your efforts will not only quit being effective, but it will actually begin to hurt you.

That’s why people who overtrain end up injured -- their bodies can only handle so much. The same is true with your mental stamina.

It’s not “lazy” to need to take a break and do other things occasionally. You’re actually hurting yourself by skipping those things.

4. Eliminate time wasters

I used to think of productivity killers as obvious things, like checking email first thing in the morning. But I have found that for me, it’s actually much more subtle than that.

Often, the biggest productivity killers or all are those little time wasters that I do all throughout my day.

Things like spending 15 minutes trying to figure out what I’m going to eat for lunch.

Or randomly deciding to do a load of laundry because I realized I ran out of clean pants.

Or spending ten minutes looking for my workout clothes when I could have just set them out the night before.

Now I have learned there are really easy ways to plan ahead so I don’t waste time doing things that don’t matter. This looks like getting the coffee ready the night before.

Filling up my water bottle and putting it in my office so that it’s ready to go. Picking out what I’ll eat for lunch ahead of time.

It sounds simple (and it is!) but you would be amazed how much time this can actually end up saving you.

5. Choose a plan and stick with it

Hi, my name is Jamie, and I am addicted to changing my mind about everything. This has always been a problem for me, but it became especially problematic once I started freelancing.

I would set up my schedule for the week and know exactly what I was supposed to get done. And then I would just change my mind on a whim.

At the beginning of the week, I would decide to work out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. But then Monday would come, and I would think, “Well, I’m not really feeling like working out today. But I’ll skip today and just work out on Thursday instead.

And without fail, I would end up missing most of my workouts that week.

I once heard a quote that said something to the effect of, “Successful people make up their minds quickly, and change them slowly.”

I don’t know why that’s so hard but for me, it’s really freaking hard. But over the past few years, I have learned impulsiveness is really just another form of procrastination.

And it’s a very fine line because sometimes, it’s necessary to move things around and be accommodating. But it’s even more important for me to learn how to do the things I say I’m going to do.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to build more productive habits has been key to my success as a freelancer. Once I became more productive, I was able to take on more clients, finish more work in less time, and even take on passion projects, like this blog.

If you’re not as productive as you would like to be, don’t worry. Productivity is a skill that can be learned. If you want to learn more about this topic, feel free to check on my blog on getting rid of time management guilt.