How often are you operating at 100% productivity/motivation?

Question

Sometimes I just don't feel like working. Other times I am in flow at 100% and feel like if I didn't have to sleep or have meetings I could get everything on my plate finished.How do others feel? Are you mostly working at your optimal productivity / motivation level? Has it changed as you got older?Maybe it's just me but there are days I get nothing done, and when you have daily stand-ups you simply cannot say that so you just make shit up or say you were swamped in busy work.I'm wondering if there is a better philosophy to managing people with this in mind, although I am finding that humans need deadlines and external pressure in some form or nothing gets done.

rektide · Accepted Answer

I'm probably fully-in for about 8 hours a month. Half that time it's just raw fear of failure, of not delivering, of having to work, hard, now, or else. The other half is just seizing upon interesting work & entering into that space where my will really is behind making it go. Being fully-in is hard, but I spend a lot of time at 50-80% in.
I did some leetcode for the first time in a couple years the other night & was surprised to find it become 4:00AM on me. Tight reward cycle, that: make. it. go.!
A general producitvity hack is to commit yourself to making a commit every day. It can be shit, bad, barely do anything, and if you want you can rebase it away latter. But commmit, every day, to starting & doing something: commit to comitting. Get on the board that day, show up, even on your bad days.
Starting is often the hardest part.

jejones3141 · Answer

No, it's not just you, and yes, it's definitely changed as I've aged, though I lack the data to say whether it's purely the result of aging, or perhaps it's depression.