Productivity | Puttylike

Feeling Exhausted and Unproductive? Here’s How Not to Feel Bad About Yourself

2 July 2018

As a kid, I never understood why adults were so slow. Surely it would be more natural to run around and bounce and clamber – what was wrong with them? Why were all adults so lazy?! Now I’m (allegedly) an adult, I get it: We’re not lazy… we’re just exhausted. That seemingly infinite energy just […]

You Probably Need to Do This One Thing More Often

29 May 2018

29 Comments

Note from Emilie: I thought it would be appropriate to publish this article by Neil right after my last post. You might call it #adviceIneedtohear. Maybe it will benefit you, too. ** Do your attempts to be kind to yourself ever backfire? I’ve noticed lately that my moments of self-generosity are occasionally actively unhelpful to […]

Why You Should Stop Freaking Out About Wasting Your Time

22 January 2018

40 Comments

Why You Should Stop Freaking Out About Wasting Your Time

We can’t control whether to spend our time, only what we spend it on. This thought has echoed around and around in my mind ever since I read the story of Opus 40 – a sculpture park created by one man over 37 years(!). Part of me recoils in horrified terror at the thought of […]

How to Multitask Effectively as a Multipotentialite

2 October 2017

20 Comments

Multitasking gets a bad rap. We’re told not to do it–that it’s inefficient and that it prevents us from focusing fully on anything. But what is multitasking exactly? And could it be reframed to become a helpful tool in our kit? First… Does Multitasking Even Exist? What is multitasking? The truth is that what we […]

How to Make Your Free Time Count

12 June 2017

24 Comments

The usual problem with time is not having enough of it. Between work, my own projects, home life, social life and various necessities, it feels as if I barely get to exercise my true passion of absolutely wasting my time. (This comedy sketch describes it perhaps a little too perfectly…) Joking aside, there’s lots of […]

The Serious Business of Tinkering Time

10 April 2017

25 Comments

I have a problem. Well, I have plenty of problems. But one in particular is bugging me right now: I’m no longer in the exciting early stage of my current priority project, brimming with initial enthusiasm. I’m fighting the temptation to fall into a pit of cynicism and despair and tedium. Not only is it […]

“Why am I Neglecting My Interests?”

13 March 2017

33 Comments

This week, I’m sharing something from the mailbag: Hi Emilie, First of all I want to thank you for you work. You really opened a wide and beautiful world in front of me. The thing that is worrying me is that I do want to do a looooot of different things, but it seems like […]

Do You Plan, Ruminate, Worry, Poke, Prod, and Fumble? How to Stop Overanalyzing Your Projects

6 February 2017

38 Comments

I’ve been planning to write this post for approximately seven years. Every possible paragraph has been carefully researched. Each of my thoughts has been passed by a number of focus groups. (In fact, the focus groups were themselves chosen by focus groups, although it took me several months of careful focus-grouping to discover that that was […]