Getting Shit Done Doesn't Make You a Good Person

We give far too much credit to productive people—many of whom don't even have to lift a finger to find their drive.

[Me in front of a gallery wall I assembled last week]

Without wanting to add to the cacophony of productivity hacks landing in your inbox this month, I’ve had so many messages from my followers over the past week asking how I manage to achieve what I do in a day (especially when it comes to DIY), it felt an opportune moment to talk seriously about output culture. I am acutely aware that by sharing my personal 24 hours, I make others feel not so great about theirs. I know this, because someone or another will message me, literally on a daily basis, to tell me I make them feel inadequate. It’s most often mothers. In the grand scheme of the things that I would like to bring to this Earth, making other mums feel like crap is quite literally my last intention—outside of nuclear annihilation, of course.

I personally feel the way we talk about productivity—as a goal to be achieved if only we tried hard enough—totally misrepresents the reality of how productive people get shit done. Further, I believe we have all been fed facile lies about productivity, with a whole industry of books and podcasts and online coaching courses predicated on the idea that there are generic ways to become more productive. I have never had to try hard, or try at all to be productive and it’s not something, outside of my first trimesters, that I have ever once struggled with. I literally woke up like this. I understand that this is a bit like revealing you ‘can’t keep weight on’ or complaining about being so beautiful that, ‘men can’t stop staring at you’ (lol). But I can’t answer the question honestly without admitting that I don’t have to drive myself and that I deserve absolutely no credit for being driven— I just won the genetic and environmental lottery when it comes to productivity.

I’ll confess up front that I don’t have any hacks as easy takeaways in this piece. Your ability to get things done is a deeply personal, deeply individual relationship which stretches tentacle-like into your psyche, your upbringing and your biological makeup. The way I motivate and encourage myself to achieve anything probably means bugger all for you, because I’m drawing on a lifetime of cues and habits which are self-referential. My hope instead, is that this little meander into the foundations behind my personal productivity might spark you to think a little deeper about your own context— and perhaps help you see your own situation in a different light.

Stripping things back to where it all started, I can say that I have always been very productive. When you think about achieving tasks, it’s so valuable to look back at how it was modelled for you as you were growing up, because that has such a long reach. I was raised in a family in which hard work was seen, almost puritanically for atheists, as ‘its own reward’. While mum was a bit of an outlier (though as a single parent who worked full time, enjoyed da club at weekends and thrice weekly step aerobics classes, she was hardly a slouch), the rest of my family judged itself (and others) on graft. My dad is especially, in his own indoorsy way, a man of great determination and I grew up seeing him build guitars and wardrobes, brew beer, develop photography or paint a ceiling 10 times through the night. I cannot remember a single moment when he hasn’t been working on multiple projects in his workshop and he becomes so deeply immersed in his work, he barely comes up for air—even in his 70s. As a child, I was desperate for his approval and validation, so I definitely took his model on board. It was so powerful that my brother, who hasn’t spoken to him for 15 years, did the same.

The motor that then drives my productivity is ambition. I am still wildly, unabatedly ambitious and it has pushed me to say yes to nearly every question I’ve been asked of in life–for both better and worse. While I’m currently exploring the value of self-compassion and we hear so much these days about the obvious power of saying no, I do often reflect on how important yes has been in my life too. My successes have all been down to a mixture of seized opportunity, backing myself to do something which I didn’t know if I really could while grinding forward towards a brighter, bigger, better future. Which is exactly what I was raised to do. My elders, both my parents and grandparents, strongly guided me to aspire to a different life from theirs, specifically one in which material scarcity didn’t play such a big part (they were all initially devastated when I decided to pursue a career in fashion). I’m still not ‘there’ in terms of financial security, so that original drive remains at the gates.

On top of the modelling and the motor, stamina and the energy to do shit is something that becomes habitual. It is not new for me to be engaged in output or activity from the moment I open my eyes. From 16-21 I balanced 20-30 hours a week stacking cheddar into fridges at Sainsbury’s with my A-levels and Uni work on top of all sorts of bonkers UCAS-form inspired activities (Young Enterprise, Duke of Edinburgh, Grade 8 Clarinet, I mean). Then I worked full time for two years as intern while also working Saturdays and Sundays at Monsoon in the N1 Centre while simultaneously gaining my Master’s at the London College of Fashion. The eight years I worked on magazines and newspapers were the most hardcore of my life and I thought nothing of a 60-hour week (on top of a 4-hour daily commute at the beginning). In comparison to what it took to build my career, I don’t work as hard now, thank the heavens. Burnout is not aspirational for anyone. But obviously, I haven’t lost that experience or stamina to be productive. It feels like muscle memory—I just now apply it to book writing, softplay and building radiator covers. The point is that my track record has further bolstered my head start, because I know how to achieve lots of tasks at a pace and that self-perpetuates, especially as there has been enough pay off (with notable exceptions) to keep me believing in the whole philosophy of nipping things in the bud.

The underlying framework of my personal productivity isn’t necessarily healthy, but it operates without needing any cultivation. Fuelled by validation seeking, a burning ambition driven by material scarcity, a hinterland of both physical and mental graft and a positive feeling about how hard work has paid off for me in the past, it is so far away from ‘drinking lemon water’ or ‘exercising frequently’. It runs so fricking deep and it is mostly unearned.

Added into the mix of all of this is my very specific environment. To start off, yes, I have two children under five who obviously temper the pace of what I can achieve outside of their care. But they sleep a lot. I haven’t been woken up once by either of my kids at night for at least a year. Both of them slept 2-3 hours over lunch every single day (Ripley is still doing this at 2, Grey napped ‘til three and a half). They are both asleep by 7pm and they don’t wake me until 7am. I’m not boasting (yes, they have a routine and I obviously sleep trained them, but they are both passionate sleepers by nature), it’s an admission that it isn’t a level playing field. If you’re not sleeping, there’s no point someone suggesting you eat the frog—your body is never going to function properly without that rest. One of the biggest reasons I manage to stay up ‘til midnight hanging shelves is that I know I’ll have 7 solid hours sleep ahead and that is an incredibly unfair advantage. It’s very easy to compare apples to oranges when you’re superficially looking in on someone else’s life. Obviously you’ll feel comatose post 8pm if you haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in three years.

On top of that, I do a job that doesn’t sap my energy, but feeds it. I never watch the clock, it’s generally only my appetite or bladder that makes me stop for a break. I immerse—just like my dad—into my work, because I find it exhilarating. I have been exceptionally fortunate to have a) found my true calling and been able to make money from it and b) been born in a moment where there are additional streams of income to be made as a writer. This has enabled me to feed and fund additional care of my children through my influencer work, while feeding my soul through writing. While content creation has its perils, fortunately I don’t care what Norma and her neggy mates think of me (as a lifetime overachiever, censure is nawt new), so that doesn’t drain me either. Because I work for myself, I have the freedom to manage my own time, which means I can lean in and out of the different tasks I manage during the week and slot things into convenient spaces, which wouldn’t be possible if I was in a 9-5. I also have a partner who works for himself and is into the idea of being a hands-on dad. Seven times out of 10, he’s able to help me with the kids if I give enough notice and that is something I never, ever take for granted. While we don’t have any consistent family support, when the nans do look after the kids, they provide me with quality time for rest or to deep dive into projects. There are so many factors which support my ability to produce.

What I’m basically saying is that it is very easy to look at social media and see me packing in Pilates and DIY and writing a Substack column, three hours of calls and picking my kids up from school and doing dinner, bed, bath, stories, songs, then slipping into a pailette dress and painting the town red and think WTF, how is this all happening in one day? But the individual forces that combine to create both the foundations and drive behind it all are so deeply faceted. We do not all have the same 24 hours in the day, simply because the matrix of advantages and disadvantages (from our families to work-life arrangements to how genetically restful the children we spawn happen to be) we build that structure upon are so disparate to make them incomparable.

Sure, I do bunch of things that you’ve probably heard about before to achieve tasks, things which will be in the books. But without the drive from within, it is so much harder to sustain. I’m absolutely not saying that there isn’t anything to be learnt from these books or that mindsets or generational patterns can’t be broken and changed. But I don’t want anyone to think that they are failing because the, ‘23 ways to be more productive in 2023,’ don’t shift the dial, or because they can’t do the same as someone else who was innately programmed to complete a to do list.

There is no question that for all the positives that my mindset has brought to my life, there is a good quotient of negatives too. In no way am I saying that my way is the way to think. I’m clearly not an expert or a psychologist or anything except for Hermione at 39. But if you were wondering how I do it, or at least how I think I do it, this is it. Perhaps there’s one little thing I’ve mentioned that might trigger a memory or thought path which might support you in your own relationship with productivity. Or maybe, you might now see my many dispositional and environmental advantages and have a more appreciative outlook on your own output. Either way, just remember we can only do what we can do. For me, that doesn’t include driving, diarising or dancing. If you see me doing any of those things, that’s when I deserve a pat on the back.