Be a Bad Dog

Productivity advice, by Felix.

This post was originally published on June 1, 2025.

You want to be productive? Stop reading productivity advice. 

I used to devour this stuff. Any article I saw that remotely fit into the kind of work I did, any content that promised to offer some slight advice about how I could do better – man, I ate that shit up. 

When I had the urge to read that garbage, I must have unconsciously seen myself as a failure who needed to shore up his weaknesses. Or I wanted to read about the kind of things I already did, a sort of affirmation from a “somebody” that I did the right things. 

In a way, those productivity gurus helped by motivating me to move beyond my self-imposed limitations. But they also gave me bad habits. Like trying to do as much as possible every day instead of doing what I need to do and enjoying the rest. 

If you want my advice, don’t take anyone’s advice.

Doing Your Best

When I have some project to do, I always say I try hard. But if I'm being honest, it feels hard because it's 50% worry and 50% hope with 10% effort, which is how I can say I gave it 110%. I will often procrastinate because I don't know what to do, then before the deadline I will produce something that, a day or two later, is obviously not my best work. It sure feels exhausting at the end of it, which is how I can say I tried hard.

Doing your best is situation dependent. I always look back and imagine what I could have done better, but that reimagined scenario is always the best version of me working in the most favorable conditions. Well, yeah, then I guess I could have done better.

This is hardly ever the case. Taking off the rose-colored retro-specs, we see that, in those moments, we had four other reports to write. Or fifty urgent emails to answer. Or a screaming kid in the back seat on the way to an outing when you only slept for three hours because the other one shrieked all night and there's no coffee anywhere on earth strong enough to fix it. So, in those circumstances, did we do our best?

We could always do better, especially if we had to go back and do it again. But isn't that what learning is? Isn't that how we grow?

Spoiler: You will always have to do it again but it will look slightly different. And you might still screw it up. When that happens, don't ask yourself if you did your best. Ask if you did it better than last time. If yes, congratulations. If not, no worries. I promise you will get another chance.

Be a Bad Dog

Life is messy. I know this and you know this. Why keep trying to make it perfect? Maybe the greatest life hack is to just stop hacking. 

It’s great to have goals, and we need to keep all our important stuff organized. Got it. Consider, however, this list I made in my twenties of all the things I wanted to accomplish: Achieve fluency in five completely different languages, teach myself classical piano, exercise four days a week, read voraciously, remember every birthday and anniversary, become a chess expert. And I wanted to do all of that in five years (which seems like an eternity in your twenties).

Even in my own journals I asked myself if I took on too much. My conclusion? Of course not! I wrote, “It can be done, but you must set priorities. I am keenly aware of my time and its passing. If it passes wasted, that is a crime. Never be bored! There’s so much to learn and to do!” Ok, I like the motivation. But boredom is not all bad. Do you want to live your life as the slave of a to-do list?

For the record, around the same time I also wrote: “I am the only guy I know who thinks getting out of bed at 4:48 is late and whose schedule is jammed at five o’clock in the morning.”

This is part of our problem: Always looking ahead to the next hurdle, the next thing that's going to prevent us from doing what we want to do. But all that looking-ahead – the strategizing, the game planning, the to-do list, the rigidity – it all keeps us from doing what we truly want and what is truly necessary. Overdone, it’s a leash around our necks yanking us away from smelling the roses.

Past and Future Self

Consider who wrote that damn to-do list anyway.

I always thought that my past self knew better than my future or present self, that he had some insight and I could look to him for guidance. But I am right now my past self for my future self. When my future self is my present self, I will look back at my past self (me now) as having good insight about how to use my time. But the fact is that my present self (my future past self) is a lazy sack of shit who is pushing work into the future because he doesn’t feel like doing it. So don’t fall for it! He’s lying! He’s giving you a lot to do because it’s Friday and he wants to go home and he knows for you it’s Monday so fuck you. 

My past, present, and future selves do not have a good relationship.

Really, the past self (lazy jerk that he is) and the future self (energetic go-getter that he is) are both complete fabrications. Present-us (conflicted, confused, maybe motivated, mostly lazy) is the only thing that ever is. Maybe instead of some crazy to-do list with action items from pie-in-the-sky unachievable goals, present-us should do just one thing on the list before they give one more thing to future-us. Perhaps we should look into the future and do future-us a solid by taking something off our plate.

I've had enough of trying to change things about myself. I feel lately that I've hit a good stride and I am in a comfortable spot with where I am. The self-help gurus would call this a plateau that I need to break through. I call it equilibrium. I have things I'm not good at, areas where I struggle, and things I want to learn. But I accept my strengths and weaknesses and acknowledge that I can't have or do it all. 

There is nothing fundamental about us that we need to change.

Unless you’re a complete asshole, then yes, change that.

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