How makers stay productive

I find that those ruts are usually a result of either doing menial work or work that I do not enjoy. What works for me is the Pomodoro technique.

25 mins of focused work followed by a reward/break. Do something entertaining for a short period of time. (it could be anything from walks to listening to music to chatting with co-workers) And repeat.

It's important to engage the other aspects of your brain in between focus times. Eventually, your brain begins to start associating the work with the reward and focus comes more naturally.

I've created an alexa routine "start focus time" which will set a 30min timer and play my focus playlist from spotify. This really helps, and I added the extra 5min buffer in case I need to do some prep and can't jump right in.

I usually get stuck when I'm not breaking my tasks down into actual tasks, so I can't move forward because the task is impossible. A little free form time - where I force myself to write a bunch of ideas and let wild ideas out helps me focus and reframe.

What kind of rut are you looking to escape?

It really depends on the kind of rut you have found yourself in.

I've found two that really hit me, the too much work or burn out.

Heavy workload, Stress, context switching, etc can leave me feeling in a rut, my only way out of this is to start a todo list and start at the start and work them through 1 by 1 until they are done.

There is no easy way around that one if it hits me, I just have to get the work done. But it helps to get a clear picture of what I'm up against.

The other rut I end up in is just the burnout rut. That feeling when don't feel like working on anything. Can't focus and just a bit bored but feel like I have too much to do.

It's almost like a light burnout feeling, this isn't so easy for me but I have a few things I've found help me, getting out. I take a break, a few days off and away from the computer, come back and work on something different for a while.

Give my head something new or different to think about.

Hope that helps in some way, it's not an easy thing to figure out but hopefully we can help.