the mindset shift that makes productivity feel easy

the mindset shift that makes productivity feel easy

getting out of your own head and learning to move before you’ve talked yourself out of it

ayushi thakkar

Nov 03, 2026

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i have had a quality where i’d turn a relatively simple task into an afternoon-long intellectual exercise. for example, if i needed to write something, i’d begin by deciding when would be the best time to write it. then i’ll consider whether i should finish a few smaller tasks first so that i can concentrate properly. i’d make a cup of coffee and spend an unreasonable amount of time organising the notes i’ve already organised twice. by the time i would finally open the document, i’d exhausted a significant portion of my enthusiasm without having written a single sentence.

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the frustrating thing was that i was not avoiding the work itself. once i began, i usually enjoy it. the difficulty is the enormous amount of negotiation that takes place beforehand. i’ve somehow convinced myself that beginning requires the right conditions and a reasonably convincing plan for how everything will unfold. if those conditions aren’t available, there’s always tomorrow, when i will apparently wake up with a completely different personality and an excellent ability to concentrate.

but now, i’ve been experimenting with a much simpler approach:

stop giving a task enough time to become intimidating.

overthinking is good at making everyday responsibilities feel larger than they are. the longer something remains unfinished, the more complicated it becomes in our imagination. the project we haven’t started begins to feel like an enormous undertaking because we’ve spent weeks considering everything that could go wrong. eventually, the task acquires a kind of importance that has very little to do with the actual amount of work involved.

but it is interesting to see how often we treat thinking about doing something as a necessary part of doing it. preparation is key when a task genuinely requires it, but there’s a point at which planning becomes a socially acceptable way of postponing the discomfort of beginning. we can spend hours researching the best approach while avoiding the one thing that would give us useful information about how difficult the work actually is.

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