If you have tried and failed to learn how to play the guitar, the reason is simply this: One day, you put the guitar back in its case and never took it out again.

That’s how people end up not completing the online courses they signed up for: They just stop logging in.

And the diet and exercise plan…the effort to quit smoking or drinking…the new budget that will allow us to save money for once…we abandon these initiatives when life gets in the way.

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There are times when that elusive quarry known as “productivity” is impossible to get ahold of.

Grief, stress, and anxiety are like RAM-intensive applications running in the background of your mind, hogging all the resources and leaving you with only a sliver of processing power to complete your work.

Sometimes, you can still spend the afternoon putting in the time and going through the motions. A day of being present in body only isn’t much of a setback. But if you’re working from home — or worse, working for yourself — day after day without being able to focus, you might need to do something differently. In this article, I’ll share my tips for being productive when I’m exhausted, distracted, or overwhelmed and the work still has to get done.

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Students at The Little Middle School love to collaborate on projects. They particularly enjoy organizing events and activities.

One of the first things we have to teach them, however, is that collaborating on a project does not mean that they’ll be engaged in a continuous meeting for the duration of their planning and execution. We teach them to meet to discuss objectives, brainstorm ideas, and organize their ideas into a structure. Then they identify and assign roles. After that, everybody must split up to actually do the work.

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My team and I teach our students to create their own learning plans.

It’s exciting to empower them to make their own decisions about pacing. For instance, if they want to finish an algebra textbook by April 1, they might realize that they have to do two hours outside of class each weekday. When this “homework” is self-administered and in the service of a goal, they are much more enthusiastic about it.

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Throughout my life, I’ve struggled with my perception of time.

I am on board with the concept that time is fluid and nonlinear. I’ve had more trouble with the more basic idea that time is finite in practice.

I might glance at the clock at 6:03. Then I brush my teeth, gather a few things to put in my bag, and put on my shoes. Guess what! It isn’t 6:03 anymore. How is that possible???

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Funny how the impulse to tidy takes hold when there’s something even less appealing to take care of.

That less-appealing thing might be our most important work, but we don’t feel worthy of it. We’ve locked it away in a fortress like the princess in Super Mario 3, buried beneath many layers of to-dos. We have to clean off the desk, water the plants, put the kids through college.

What I’ve learned in my moments of inspired action is that it’s possible to bypass my rules and preconceptions about getting things done and dig right in on the most important project. The only big scary monster guarding the castle is the one created by my own mind.

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