Being a productive, well-rounded person is hard. I don’t think there are enough people out there that are actually talking about this well enough.

It is difficult to get up in the morning, plan your day, and then try all that you can to manage your time to ensure that you optimally use your day, sometimes regardless of how you feel.

Sure, there are some days that you wake up and get a burst of energy that lasts for half the day in which you just want to perform, get all your tasks done on time, and genuinely will enjoy the feeling of grinding for a major chunk of the day.

For me, that happens about once a week, and often, I get that sort of energy after spending the previous day not performing to the best of my abilities and then wake up and, instead of acknowledging the guilt that is really the reason underlying my sudden burst of energy, I decide to overachieve the next day. Of course, one thing that I have learnt is that when I set out to over achieve, I do not end up being able to accomplish all that I have set out to do. As I explained in my other post on planning my days , I am almost a pro at setting out to do just too much in a day than is humanly possible.

However, most of the time, I wake up, and I hover around median energy, the sort of energy that I need to accomplish just enough sometimes, without particularly over romanticizing what I am about to do. So I wake up and I know I am going to work, I may or may not enjoy it, but I am going to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that I get when I perform the tasks that I have set out for myself.

And then there are days I wake up and feel an intense headache just looking at my laptop, and feel as though I would rather do any other thing than actually sit down to work.

A few productivity books acknowledge days like this, the ‘hard days’, the days in which you do not have any atom of motivation left in you, in which your reserve of willpower is completely dried up, in which you want to do nothing but lie in bed and press your phone and watch movies and eat junk food, do any other thing than get up to do some work.

Sometimes, I have found that this also happens after a day of over exerting myself. I wake up then, feeling weary and sleep deprived, and then I look at my desk, and remember how hellish the other day was, how I worked myself up to a headache, and then just the thought of getting up and being as productive as I was the other day is enough to send chills running down my spine.

There are two things that usually happen to me when this sort of situation comes up. One is that I may actually laze about for a few hours before I finally guilt trip myself into working, or I remember people on YouTube, study streamers, who spend 12 hours daily doing nothing but sitting on their desks and studying, even one that was able to do so for an entire year, or the productivity gurus that I read books on who can achieve seemingly impossible feats and then I get hard on myself, and I force myself to get up and sit on that desk and open that laptop and work. I mean, I have read enough productivity books to know that ‘the grind never stops’ (but it can take some pauses though).

And then there are days it happens to me mid day. As a creative, there are bound to be times in which I get so frustrated with my writing that I just abandon it all and go to take a nap or go do something else to avoid staring at the jargon that I am conjuring up. But then, the problem is, the moment that I leave work that I am doing, it is terribly difficult to summon the energy to go back to continue, especially when I know that going back to it means going back to the hurdle that I know I am supposed to provide a solution for.

But that is just one of the problems. Because there is a reason there are scores of books on productivity and discipline and why, according to Market Research Blog, the self-help industry is worth over 10.5 billion dollars (according to a 2020 research). You see, this discipline is very difficult to accomplish and we humans are not very good at it.

I think one reason hard days are so, well, hard is because it is in those days that it seems almost impossible to practice delayed gratification. I mean, do you think it is easy to put away your phones and delete loved apps and movies so that you can actually work to become, you know, successful and accomplished in life? Of course not. You think there is anyone out there who, when given the choice between working out, getting up early, performing tasks, checking off to-do lists, being productive and just lying on the bed and streaming movies for hours on end, with the assurance of still ending up being successful would choose the former? I mean, the person would have to be half mad.

We all know that. We all have had situations in which we have had to let go of things that we would rather do just so that we can accomplish things that we have set out for ourselves. And we all know how much it hurts to do so. And one thing that I have learnt is that it hurts even more during the hard days.

I feel like one of the true reason it is so difficult for people to push through during the hard days, is because that you never really know whether you are even going to succeed, despite all that you put yourself through to ensure that you do. Have you ever had that moment, when, during the times in which you have lost all motivation, you find yourself thinking, well, this might not even work anyway, so why even bother? I know that I have.

There is a lot of difference between knowing that if you wait for sometime more and exercise will power, that you will most definitely get the second cookie and being made to exercise willpower on the grounds that even if you wait, there is no real assurance that you might get that second cookie.

This, I have found out, can be a major deterrent to even exercising discipline in the first place. I mean, it is really difficult to burn the midnight candle when there is always that knowledge at the back of your mind that you might not even end up being successful.

Are you reading on, hoping that I would provide some sort of tried and tested way of putting a permanent end to the pain and the uncertainty that is associated with discipline and delayed gratification, to push through the hard days? Because there is none. Trust me, if there were, I would have found it already somehow.

Sure, if you do your research, you might find some feel good articles or write-ups that would give you 200 things to do to ensure that you remain productive all the time and ensure that you succeed no matter what. But there is a chance that you might end up feeling guilty when you wake up some mornings and find that even after all you have done, you still have the hard days, the days when work feels like actual literal hell.

The point remains that this is a normal part of human existence, and we just have to deal with it. But there is one thing that I have found, and it is that, when you are properly equipped, it is easier for you to deal with it. Being properly equipped with all the right knowledge on habit formation, the ways to push through hard days, how to subdue the demon of procrastination and so on makes the difference between a person who gives in to his or her lack of motivation on hard days and the person who actually pushes through when such days come up.

This post is already long enough, and taking a proper deep delve into the different methods and systems used by the best productivity coaches will take quite a lot of words, so I think I will leave with just a few tips, nothing more.

First is this, realize that whilst there would be an uncertainty as regards success no matter how hard you work towards it, you can most definitely be assured of failure if you fail to put in the necessary work to achieve your dreams. Yes, sure, if we were in an ideal perfect world in which all things worked out just how we wanted things to go, we would not have to worry about failure after working hard. A good number of the time, we would face setbacks as we work towards our goals, but this should never hold us back from doing the needful in terms of our goals and dreams. And this should nevr be an excuse to give in during the hard days.

However, always remember to put the Lord into whatever you are working towards, so that at least, if you experience any setbacks, you can be sure that it is God’s instruction for you to keep pushing as it is not the right time to get the desired success and not a clear indication of the fact that you are not working in line with your purpose in life.

Again, I can never underestimate the importance of just starting. One thing that I have found is that even during the times in which I have felt as though I would rather do anything other than do a particular activity, the moment that I started, I would end up being able to do more work than I thought I would be capable of doing.

Of course, if it were easy to just start, a lot of us would have started doing the important things that we were supposed to do a long time ago, but it is very difficult to when you are not in the mood to. Some time later, I will write a blog post on the importance of making yourself bored enough that you have no other option than to work (and by this, I mean removing all distractions so that you can have nothing else to take your mind off doing the needful).

Another thing that is important is to understand your energy levels and how to optimize it so that you do not feel weak and lethargic when you are supposed to be active and productive. But this is something that I am still working on and researching on, so it would be a post for another day. One of the key methods that I have learned, however, is that understanding your sleep cycle, can help with keeping us at optimal energy and that we should all acknowledge the importance of knowing the effects that food, especially sugar and energy boosters like coffee, has on our bodies and energy during the day.

Another thing that I have noticed helps me to work for long periods of time is knowing the things that can keep me going. This includes music, snacks by my side, and being in a comfortable, well lit environment. A lot of productivity authors have found that the conditions of the environment that a person works in goes a long way in determining how willing the said person would be to do a particular work. Hence, that is why many people dedicate themselves to making sure that their work environment is as pleasant as possible and having all resources available within arm’s reach as they study.

Of course, there is so much more that comes with being able to exercise discipline and delay gratification. Otherwise, there would not be a million and one books on the topic. But if you are battling with starting on hard days, maintaining focus and delaying gratification, you can start with these little tips that have proven to work for me.