I’ve read lots and lots of “productivity hacks” and methods supposedly designed to help you get more done. Some are okay and a lot are terrible, but I’ve noticed that most seem to be focused on the space between you and your work. Most of these methods assume that given the clear space to work, you are simply having trouble executing – maybe you can’t concentrate, maybe you aren’t working effectively, etc.

But in my experience where the rubber meets the road, that’s not actually where most threats to productivity come from. They mostly tend to come from external forces, due to the fact that the majority of those who care about these kinds of methods have to work with other people, usually to a large degree.

Whether they’re your clients, co-workers, bosses, or direct reports, people demand your attention. A lot. They’re not deliberately trying to undermine you, but here is a weird thing that happens in the brain of all people: when you can’t see someone, you sort of accidentally default to assuming they’re not doing anything. Sure, you wouldn’t say that and you wouldn’t even think it if asked directly, but when you haven’t actively thought about it, your awareness of other people is usually static. Your brain isn’t constantly holding a dynamic universe containing the movements and activities of everyone you know; it’s just keeping their identities in a mental file folder.

So when you need something from Jill in accounting, you ask her. You never even stop to think that she might be busy trying to be productive. The thought might even annoy you! Heck, “productive?” Her job is to help you, isn’t it?

And of course, other people think that about you. Not consciously, but when they reach out to ask you a question or a favor, they’re doing it because their mental inventory told them that you were the right person based on what you could do – never mind what you might actually be doing.

So here’s the best productivity hack I know: every day, tell everyone what you’re doing and when. Just put a little notice up (in the world of remote work this is actually a little easier than in an office setting, but even in an office you can do it) that tells everyone your basic itinerary for the day. It doesn’t have to be deeply detailed, just something like “I’m going dark from 9 to 11 on this project, then I’ll be available from 11 to 12, then lunch until 1, then dark again from 1 to 4 on this other project, then available to respond to things from 4 to 5.”

This very simple action builds both walls and bridges – like a toll bridge. It builds walls around your time, and it builds bridges in terms of your rapport and role as a team player. It gives people a viable way to connect with you, while simultaneously imposing a reasonable cost to do so. When people get these informal daily notices about your work, their impression of you subtly shifts to one where they view you as dynamic. As productive. And this, in turn, helps make it so – because no one wants to interrupt a busy bee.

This is a 5-minute task that can save you hours of lost time to friction and interruptions. Plus, it helps give YOU a little reminder and motivation to stay on task – after all, you said you were doing something. You made a public commitment to be doing it, so you take away your own ability to put it off or procrastinate without also making yourself a liar.

What happens between you and your work is on you – but at least you can impose some order on what happens between you and everyone else.

…sometimes.

Today I got a morning routine started that I’d been struggling with for a while. I went about it a little differently, and got different – positive! – results.

On most days, when I want to accomplish something I rely on a combination of two methods. The first is to focus on the benefits of that thing; why I want it done, what it will do for me, etc. The second is to focus on the positive personality traits that I want to associate with that thing and remind myself that I have them. In other words, I’ll say things to myself like “an ambitious and resourceful person would get this done, and you’re an ambitious and resourceful person, so you’ll get this done!”

Those two methods – focusing on what I want to gain and who I want to be – generally work for me, and I find them to be positive mindsets. However, I am emphatically not a morning person. I wake up early, but often those early hours are spent basically auto-piloting through the required morning tasks until mid-morning when my higher creative brain kicks into gear. My new morning routine is designed to help combat this, but the problem is that the two self-motivating factors I usually employ were designed by my normal brain, for use on my normal brain. They were failing spectacularly at motivating my morning brain, which might as well be a different person.

So here’s what I did instead: last night, I did a really thorough and realistic inventory of morning brain’s normal excuses. I listed out all the reasons why I would probably not do the things I wanted to do in the morning. And then I argued. I pitted morning brain against normal brain, but on normal brain’s home turf in the quiet hours of the late evening. I anticipated everything morning brain would think and want, and sort of built a mental bridge across that gap back to normal brain.

It worked. I woke up this morning with all the normal morning brain emotions and excuses. But none of them were original, and normal brain’s strategy was still clear in my mind. Normal brain planned everything out, from the playlist of music that would energize me to the ingredients for the healthy breakfast already laid out. All the prep work was done, so morning brain’s auto-pilot just had to follow the path.

I never once thought about my normal motivating factors. I knew morning brain would be unmoved by long-term benefits (morning brain is a notoriously short-term thinker) and morning brain doesn’t really care what kind of person I am at the core and so aspirational calls to personal betterment fall on deaf ears. But morning brain can be pushed and prodded along paths of least resistance and can be browbeaten into giving up weak excuses, so that’s what I did.

Accepting the world as it is sometimes means accepting ourselves as we are – but not because we want to stay that way. But because we have to acknowledge the true starting conditions. I would love to be able to accurately claim that I’m awesome 24/7. But the reality is that the version of me that exists between the hours of 6 AM and about 10 AM is usually a real piece of shit. That started to change today though, and this is actually the last step in that planned routine – putting it down here to cement it into my brain that it worked and I feel wonderful.

And it’s just a little after nine.

I think many people – probably myself included – don’t appreciate the difference an improved toolset can make in the performance of tasks you truly care about.

While “it’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools” is true to a degree, it’s undeniably a union. All hammers aren’t the same. Every time I’ve made a small but reasonable investment into a better tool for something I do frequently, it’s made enormous improvements.

I camp regularly; getting a good pair of boots was worth many times the price. The same ended up being true when I upgraded my cold-weather gear in general. For household projects, my “suburban dad” toolset is extremely decent and works great. Even things like a better chair can improve your writing.

I think you should only ever buy two kinds of tools for any given task. Type 1: the absolute cheapest available. Buy that when you aren’t even sure if you want to do the task yet – you want to learn it, have a low-risk way to make mistakes, and get a sense for what improvements you’d like to see. Type 2: The very best available. Buy that once you know that you’ll be doing the task many more times for an extended portion of your life – buy the best once.

Skip everything in between.

Let’s say that from your current location, you know that the destination you want is north of you. So you say “I’ve got to go north,” and you start walking. Except, you don’t have any idea which way is north so you basically just picked a random direction.

Not only aren’t you going to reach your destination, but you also aren’t likely to discover that you’re going the wrong way for a long time. By the time you realize your mistake, you might just decide that wherever you’re headed is where you wanted to be all along and just settle there.

This is often how people treat their own motivations. They want happiness, so they say “I’ll do this thing,” but like the traveler with no compass they have no idea if that thing will make them happy. They might eventually realize that it doesn’t, but have invested so much into it that they sort of reverse course and say “this was what I wanted anyway.”

A lot of the process of discovering what makes you happy is just that: discovery. You have to try different things to a degree. But some analysis is warranted! You should at least try to think about what “happiness” would even look like, manifest as. What does a day of your life feel like if you’re happy? What things would disrupt that? This is sort of like looking at the sunrise to get your bearings; at least have some sense of direction.

And don’t be afraid to turn back early. If a little of something didn’t make you happy, a lot of it isn’t likely to do so.