I noticed an interesting correlation between my least productive days and my sleep quality. Whenever I stop getting enough sleep or start going to bed too late, my productivity and motivation plummet. I am not 100% productive every day if I get good sleep, but if I don’t, there isn’t even a chance of being productive in the first place.

I used to blame my lack of discipline and mindset whenever I couldn’t get myself to work. And sometimes this was indeed the missing piece, however most of the time I just didn’t let my body get the energy it needs. Either by going to sleep late or not doing exercise.

That was my introduction to the biological side of motivation, then I started discovering other physical blockers in my routine that were lowering my energy.

The 3 pillars of getting work done

I first heard about this from Kat Mulvihill on Jay Clouse’s podcast. There are 3 main productivity blockers: logical, biological, psychological. And you should check them in that order too. So first of all you have to have the right skills and tools for the job, that’s the logical part. The last part is psychological, so your mindset, motivation and relationship to work, this is what I usually talk about in this newsletter. Today I want to talk about biological, which depends on how your body operates.

This part is very easy to overlook. When I didn’t pay much attention to it, I would know what I want to do and I would have the right mindset about it. But when not paying attention to the biological part, I just blamed my mindset for it.

What my body was disguising

Biological problems don’t feel biological (unless you’re obviously sick), they feel like a mindset problem, so you end up focusing on fixing the wrong thing.

Scrolling social media in the morning feels like I lost my passion for drawing, because my work just isn’t as rewarding after that. A 2 hour nap feels like I’m lazy, because I can’t get myself to do anything for the rest of the day. Checking my phone before bed feels fine, until something urgent comes up, I overthink it instead of sleeping, and I wake up the next day with no motivation and no idea why. And it works the other way too, for example after a workout, getting into work mode is way easier, because it woke my body up.

Two artists can be in the same zero motivation state, but one needs to work on their fear of being judged while the other one just needs to go to bed earlier.

The way I noticed these patterns is by observing my own days. So what you could do to find them for yourself is ask what made your good days so good and your bad days so miserable. Then just do more of what works and try to get rid of all the habits that make your days bad!

Before you decide that you’re lazy or undisciplined, see if your body even gave you a chance today.