There’s a certain flavor of smug that comes with productivity advice. You know the kind. It’s usually delivered in a tone that suggests your life would be perfect if you just got up at 5am, color-coded your goals, and drank more lemon water. These people swear by “hacks” like time blocking and morning routines that involve more steps than my entire skincare regimen. They say things like “you have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé,” as though my brain chemistry and Beyoncé’s personal assistant army are somehow comparable.
But I don’t blame them, really. I just don’t think those people have ever met someone whose brain has turned starting a task into a full-blown obstacle course of rituals, dread, and irrational certainty that if it’s not done just right, the universe will explode. Or worse—I’ll disappoint someone.
Welcome to the joy of trying to be productive when you have OCD.
It’s not that I don’t want to be organized. I romanticize organization the way some people romanticize Paris in the rain. I love the idea of systems. I adore planners. I have seven productivity apps, five notebooks, three whiteboards, and a spreadsheet that tracks my other spreadsheets. I crave order. But unfortunately, craving it and functioning within it are two very different things. Especially when the order has to be exact, or else I spiral into a shame pit lined with to-do lists I no longer understand.
Let’s start with one of the worst offenders: “Eat the frog.” Supposedly, you pick the hardest task of the day and do it first. Conquer your biggest challenge while your brain is fresh. Very empowering. Very aspirational. Very much the exact opposite of how my day begins. See, my brain likes to spend the first two hours of the morning deciding whether or not the frog is actually poisoned, if I have the right utensils to eat it, if the frog is symbolic of a larger issue I should probably unpack before proceeding. By the time I’m done overthinking the metaphor, the day’s half gone and the frog has become a three-headed hydra made of guilt and avoidance.
Then there’s “time blocking.” Oh yes. Schedule your day in perfect chunks, like you’re a well-oiled machine instead of a collection of coping mechanisms in a trench coat. On paper, it’s beautiful. On paper, I look like a functioning adult. But the second I miss a block—because my brain demanded I spend 45 minutes rewriting a single email draft until it’s been scrubbed of all potential judgment—the entire structure collapses. And then I spend the rest of the day wallowing in my failure to stick to a schedule I made up.
And can we talk about “don’t break the chain”? A simple concept. Do something every day, and mark it off on a calendar. Build momentum. Build habit. Sounds amazing—right up until life inevitably gets in the way. One bad day, one mental health spiral, one unexpected obligation, and suddenly the chain breaks. And if you’re wired like me, a broken chain doesn’t feel like a minor setback. It feels like you’ve personally desecrated the shrine of productivity and must now atone by restarting everything from scratch while loathing yourself quietly in the background.
Look, I know these methods work for some people. I don’t begrudge them their vision boards (hell, I've been known to Pomodoro a time or twenty) and ritualized 5am journaling. But I’ve stopped pretending those methods were ever made with brains like mine in mind. I don’t have a linear work pattern. I have rituals, compulsions, hyperfocus, and entire days lost to the emotional damage of not being able to complete something perfectly. I can’t “just do it.” I have to do it at the right time, in the right way, with the right conditions or my brain will light itself on fire and call it self-preservation.
And you know what? That’s not failure. That’s adaptation.
I’ve learned to trick myself into starting. I use false deadlines like psychological bait. I break my tasks down into steps so small they feel insulting, but they work. I time things with emotional logic instead of chronological sense. I light candles, retype lists, whisper threats at my own brain. I’ve built an entire productivity system out of spite and stubbornness and the deep desire not to live buried under a mountain of half-finished ideas and self-loathing.
