9 Signs You Are Not as Productive as You Think

Do you consider yourself a productive person? Is there a bullet journal, a Moleskine, and Mildliners on your desk? Do you regularly watch productivity or Studytube videos on Youtube? Those are definitely good signs. But are you really as productive as you think?

If you are ambitious and you want to get a lot done, chances are that you want to be productive. The problem is that this can often lead to being pseudo-productive, being busy instead of being productive. We all love the feeling of having accomplished something, whether it’s having written an essay or checking everything off of your to-do list.

But if you truly want to be productive, you have to cut out the faff and focus on what really matters in regards to your goals. Start by going through the following list and you’ll know what changes to make in your life:

1. You are surprised by how little you get done

Even if you have good intentions and a realistic to-do list, you might still end up disappointed at the end of the day. Do you ever feel like you had a good plan, you spent all your day working and you still got nothing much done?

Sometimes we spend time on something we think is productive, but it really isn’t. Procrastination is also common and it’s one of the biggest reasons for unproductivity. If you are often disappointed by how little you got done that day, try to take an honest look at your work habits.

Related article: Have Done Nothing Productive All Day? Here’s How to Fix It

2. You don’t finish your to-do list

So you have your goals set, you write a to-do list every morning, you spend most of the day working… and somehow you still can’t finish the list by the end of the day? This might be because you’re not efficient enough. A problem I had for a long time, was that I spent too much time on each task.

It’s good to do things properly, but perfectionism and thinking too long about your every move will not take you far. Done is better than perfect and often the little details that seem important really don’t make a difference in the big picture.

3. You multitask

Everyone knows that multitasking isn’t really good for productivity, yet it’s so easy to slip and do a bit of this and a bit of that when you should be focusing on your task at hand. Sometimes you don’t even notice that listening to music while you’re writing or quickly Googling something that came to your mind is keeping you from fully focusing on what you’re supposed to do.

You need to be brutally honest with yourself. Are you fully focused on your task or not? Does listening to music while you’re working make you slower? If the answer is yes, leave the extra activities for another time.

4. You are easily distracted

In this age and time, it’s probably easier than ever to get distracted. Your phone reminds you of new messages every so often, you have a habit of checking Instagram several times a day and it’s way too easy to stop what you’re doing to google something pointless that just came to your mind.

It takes some practice to learn to focus well, but it is definitely something you should work on. Additionally, using a distraction blocker like RescueTime can help you to stay on track.

5. You spend time making things pretty

It’s nice when things look pretty, but how your notebooks look has nothing to do with you smashing your goals. If you happen to be a part of any type of productivity community online (like Studytube or Studygram), you might be inclined to think that you need to make your notebooks nice and colorful, doodle on every page, and work on your handwriting to make it look better. But none of this will help you.

Pictures of pretty notes probably get more likes on Instagram, but they also take time from more important activities. If you want to focus on learning and accomplishing your tasks, let your notebooks and to-do lists be ugly. They will work just as well anyway.

6. You give yourself pointless tasks

To some extent, being productive is sometimes associated with doing a large number of things in a day. But in reality, it’s about doing what you need to do. You might end up writing long to-do lists for yourself just to feel extra productive. Or in some cases you have forgotten to prioritize what is important, which then leads to you doing unnecessary tasks.

As a blogger, there are about a hundred things I could spend time on any given day. I could try to have a presence on every single social media platform and spend countless hours tweaking my site speed.

But I have to figure out what makes the biggest difference and what helps the visitors the most. Creating content for a platform that doesn’t lead people to my blog or uploading Facebook stories every day is not productive, because it doesn’t help me in any way.

You have to prioritize what actually matters to your goals.

7. You don’t achieve your short-term goals

If you set realistic short-term goals for yourself and you still often find yourself not quite achieving them, something is wrong. If it’s the first time that you set goals for the next month or quarter, maybe you just didn’t quite know what is realistic for you to achieve in that amount of time. Or maybe something unexpected happened and you couldn’t spend much time working on your goals.

But if this happens often, you have to ask yourself if you really spent your time in an optimal way, or were you perhaps too busy making your bullet journal look pretty or watching motivational videos on Youtube.

8. You always feel comfortable

If you are ambitious and have big goals, you have to push yourself forward and out of your comfort zone. Constantly feeling comfortable is nice, but it can also be a sign of underperforming.

Are you really working as hard as needed to make your goals come true? Do you maybe give yourself too many long breaks or do you have a habit of only spending time on easy tasks and not trying something that is out of your comfort zone?

Try to demand a bit more from yourself. It’s not only about getting things done, it’s also about seeing what you are really capable of.

9. You are not organized

To be efficient and productive, you have to be organized. Otherwise, you’ll have to stress over everything you have to do, because you don’t know if you have time for everything or in what order you should do things.

You might feel like you can keep track of everything without writing it down. And that’s true, you can. But then you don’t get the benefit of only having to think about what you have to do on that specific day instead of trying to keep everything in your mind. Try to become more organized, it will make it much easier for you to get things done.

Conclusion

As you can see, many different things can stand in your way when you try to be productive. Fortunately, it is quite easy to fix these problems, even if it takes some self-discipline and a few days of trial and error.

Tell me what you think about this post and do you have a habit of staying busy instead of being productive. If you want to stay motivated and get some useful productivity tips, follow me on Instagram and Pinterest!