AmiSight 10/28: What Does a Productive Day Look Like?
I enjoyed this Business Insider article about Jeff Kinney, the creator of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and how he organizes his days.
Kinney has built an incredibly successful career, but his daily routine is anything but conventional. He starts with meditation, journaling, and two hours of exercise before beginning work around 9:30. He has five or six different places where he likes to work, including his car parked in a cemetery when he really needs quiet. When he's writing or illustrating, he sometimes works 8 to 12 hours a day.
What caught my attention was his admission that a good day is when he can get his to-do list below 200 items. He also acknowledges struggling with executive functioning, feeling overwhelmed by too many choices, and having almost no boundaries between work and personal life. Even on vacation, he makes himself available.
He just had his most productive year, writing two books and two screenplays, and credits much of that success to his morning routine.
I think there's something fascinating about how differently successful people operate. We spend a lot of time looking for the perfect productivity system, but perhaps the real challenge is understanding how our own brains work and building routines around that. Kinney has clearly figured out a lot about what works for him, even if some of his habits might drive the rest of us crazy.
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