It’s Sunday and while lots of people are doing their weekly #mealprep, you’re sitting, unable to move from the couch, even though you’ve been up for two hours and got like nine hours of sleep (please no one calculate how early I would have gone to bed to be writing this right now). There’s a laundry list of boring, grownup productive tasks to do today (one of them being laundry), yet here we are, being collectively unproductive (can’t be just me). So, here are some tips to be productive, or at least look like you tried.
1. Make a list
You may not follow it, but at least you’ll have it all written out in front of you how much of a failure you are as an adult when you don’t actually get any of it done. If you want to feel good about yourself, just add random things to the list like Nap for two hours so you can cross it off and feel like you’ve done something productive.
2. Substitute your tasks
When you’re feeling particularly procrastinatey, just substitute the productive task with a borderline-productive task. Like if you have to get some work done from home, but don’t feel like doing it, just go bake a batch of cookies to eat during your third hour of Netflix or start watching that show everyone else in your office has been talking about.
3. Have some coffee
With the intention of being awake and alert and ready to take on all of the aforementioned things on the list. After you’ve had this coffee, sit on the couch and tell yourself you’ll get up when the coffee kicks in and then give yourself a coffee nap. Then you can cross nap off the list. Problem solved.
4. Make your bed
There’s this weird science floating around that when you make your bed in the morning, you start your day off on the right foot or something. So, start by making your bed. If you don’t usually make your bed, this will automatically be the most productive thing you’ve ever done and if you do usually make your bed, then it’ll force you to nap elsewhere because you won’t want to ruin the only productive task you may accomplish all day.
5. Text everyone
Check in with your besties, your mom, your man, EVERYONE. Once you know everyone is alive and safe and sound, you’ll feel much more relaxed and almost ready to tackle that list. After, of course, you’ve checked Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat to ensure those people are good, too.
6. Create a reward system
Those cookies you baked? Tell yourself you can have one for every real productive task you do, like putting a load of laundry in the washing machine. You get a second cookie for remembering to put the clothes in the dryer and a bonus cookie for folding and putting away the clean clothes.
