So I wrote a book called Joy on Purpose. And one of the principles covered in that book is how to be productive when you don't necessarily have the energy to be productive. In the shortest terms. The key to this is having a list of things that you could do that's prioritized by the impact that you expect
from it. And I call this the master to do list and it should contain everything that you could imagine doing that would make things better. And in a nutshell, although the book goes into far greater detail in a nutshell, the way you sort this thing is by the greatest impact. So many times, the things
that you need to do are gonna require ideal circumstances as far as your energy, your focus and every other resource you might have, but your time, your money, all these things, but life is complicated and it's rarely the case that you have your pristine self to dedicate to a task. And so one pitfall
that people fall into is thinking of everything you could do in terms of what you have to do and rest. The fact is that anything you choose to do including resting, which is actually not this vacuous concept, resting consists of specific things that you do or don't do. But even that is choosing to do
something and it should be done for a purpose and to maximize that purpose. So when you lack the energy or other resources to tackle the the biggest highest impact thing on your master to do list, one way you can still be very productive is by using that same to do list to choose how you're going to
procrastinate. So maybe what you're gonna tackle is not the most important thing in the world, but to adjust downward based on the resources that you have in the moment. If you're particularly stressed out or upset, if you are lacking in energy, if you have very little time, these are all constraints
that you can apply to move further down your to do list and still get an awful lot done. If all you ever get done is what you get done in your ideal state, you're not gonna get a lot done. So more than anything, if you want to characterize how productive you are, measure it by what you're able to accomplish
when you're at your worst, not your best. So that being said, I wanna give you an extensive specific real world example from my own life. Um The other night, I only got about two hours of sleep due to factors outside of my control, but I I, even though I was, I was seriously depleted the following day
, I still got an awful lot done. So, what I had planned on doing that day, it was a project day. And so I was gonna spend the day outside working on our little hobby farm. And what I had planned to do was a big old project involving the extension of an animal pen complete with electric lines and all
sorts of things. I was absolutely not in the state to tackle that. So, what did I do instead? Well, uh, the next thing on my to do list that matched the resources I had at the time I had to move down, a couple of items was to work on this garden over here. And the task at hand was to remove the watering
system that I had set up there, which was, it turns out inadequate for what I needed and to begin to get it turned over and replanted because it turned into a whole sea of weeds, uh, with very little to show for it. So I went out there and, uh, the water line was disconnected and I pulled out the stakes
that were, were pinning the drip line down. And then I, um, kind of arranged all those hoses is a, is a three quarters inch poly line. The black plastic haul that out of the garden. And then, um, the next step was to pull some rocks out of that field. That wasn't on my list. The task on the list was
to take that watering system and move it over into a Raspberry patch where I think it's better suited. But while I was there, this is an example of pivoting between execution and planning, I noticed that there were a whole lot of rocks that have been exposed uh through weeks of being watered that happens
. And so this became an emergent task because it's the best time to take those rocks out when they're exposed. If I waited until I tilt again, I till them all under. Right. So I started to fill a bucket that I had on hand with these rocks. I quickly realized there were more rocks than would fit in the
bucket. So then I pivoted again and I walked over to um, where I had a box containing this wagon which I had not yet assembled. I had purchased it for this for this purpose for hauling rocks out, but I had not yet assembled it. So before I started that, I decided to increase the value of that task by
having at least one kid with me. And so instead of just building a wagon, I was gonna teach one of my kids how to read directions and put something together based on directions because that's a skill that I knew that my kids don't have yet. So I went in the house and I found a kid and I brought that
kid out and uh set out the manual and I shifted from being the one to put this thing together to being the one to teach someone how to put it together. And I just reserved my inputs for that metal level task and also tightening things that were a little too difficult to tighten and, and so on. So that
task took a little longer than it would, but I increased the long term benefit of it. So after we put together this wagon, uh, another kid meandered outside to join us and it was a, it was about lunchtime. So I dismissed Kid number one to go eat lunch in shifts so that I could use Kid Number two to continue
the work while I was in that part of our yard. I noticed that there were an awful lot of weeds that I had sprayed some weeks ago that were all dried up and dead and ugly and also fire hazard. So, um, I told Kid number two to grab the blowtorch and set up a hose as I was doing the finishing touches on
this wagon. Um I also told Kid number one and when he came back out from lunch to move the wagon over into the field where we were going to use it. So Kid Two and I blow torched a bunch of weeds and also sprayed water to make sure that we didn't ignite the whole neighborhood. And once that was done.
We put all that away, came back to the field and I gave kid number two some instructions on how we were going to pull as many weeds out as we could as efficiently as we could. Because I don't really care how many get left behind. They haven't gone to seed yet. Um, and I'm going to till all that under
, but we wanted to pull out what we could to use it for animal feed before we do that. So I instructed him on what I wanted done there. And um he, he and kid number one handled the rest on that field. I hold the water line out to the raspberry patch. Um Once I got there, I tore out the old irrigation
system that was there and worn out and broken and uh got all that into the trash and then set up this line and tied it into the existing plumbing there and turned it on to test it. Uh It didn't work. So from there, I needed a temporary solution which was just a regular old sprinkler and I knew where
that was. It was over by the pigs. So I went, I walked over to the pigs to get that sprinkler. And on my way, I noticed a few things that weren't on my to do list but would only take a minute to address. And I made a mental note to do that on the way back. I hooked up the sprinkler. And then I went,
well, actually I, I took the sprinkler to where I was gonna go and then I needed a hose. So I went to where we keep the hoses. And I noticed that my wife had used all the hoses for different things and all we had left was one scrap of a hose. And, um, so then the problem became to get a hose longer than
that because I knew about the distance I needed. So I inspected the hoses that were out and I found one connected to a sprinkler that was much longer than it needed to be, but close enough to use the scrap. So then I spliced that, that, uh, section of hose into a hose with a, a start and end connector
, um, replace the, the longer hose, put the long hose in place with the other sprinkler in the Raspberry field, turned that on to test it. It worked well. So I put a timer on that. So I didn't have to sit there and, uh, set the timer and walked away. Um, and on my way to do that, I noticed two new holes
that ground squirrels had, had made in that area. So I deployed two traps there. And then I went back to my short list of things that I had noticed that I needed to address those were that the grain bin that we used to feed the pigs was empty and no one had told me, um, so I refilled that and I fed the
pigs and I made a mental note to check on the kid whose job it is to keep that functioning. Um I refilled their water that was also out and also a mental note to talk to that kid about. And then, um, while I was doing that, I, I shot some chaff whose barley was the grain. I, I poured out a barley sack
and I got a bunch of chaff in my eyes and I made a mental note to flush my eyes out with Saline once I got inside. Uh, so after that was sorted out, uh, I went back into an area I had walked through because I had noticed that the, uh, uh, one particular plant that we, we grow for fodder, um, in our,
in our pasture, um, had, had overtaken a few trees and that was choking them out. So I went and ripped out and it took five minutes, but I ripped out a giant bear hug, armful of this stuff and fed it to the animals. And, uh, after all of that, I'm probably missing like five other things that I did. Um
, I went back inside and went to my, to do list and crossed off all of these things and it was time to eat dinner and that part of the day was complete. So on, about two hours of sleep, I still knocked out all these things that I absolutely needed to do. And I managed to teach my sons how to do things
that they didn't know, managed to check up on another son who wasn't doing what he was supposed to do. And uh, the raspberries got watered, the pigs, the pigs got fed. So that's a very specific example of how to apply this principle. And even if you don't have a farm, you can adjust those examples to
anything that's actually in your particular life. Even if this is uh limited to applications at work or limited to something that is tighter, uh more tightly scoped to inside the home. So I hope that helps.