I Finally Figured Out the Productivity Hack That Helps Me Keep All My New Year’s Resolutions.

I use a variety of tricks to trick myself into achieving my goals, such as inventing rewards and punishments for myself or relying on apps to track my progress . I’m generally a very goal-oriented person and, for better or worse, obsessed with “winning”—which I’ve always thought made me a perfect candidate for complex productivity methods like detailed , prioritized to- do lists. While I love good methods, I decided to change my approach last year when I worried I might be spending so much time prioritizing and planning that I wasn’t spending enough time on action . So I simply focused on action—and it worked. Here’s what I mean, and how my brilliant idea helped me achieve last year’s New Year’s resolutions.

Adopting a “do it now” approach

I’ve written extensively about productivity hacks for Lifehacker, and two that stood out to me, both in theory and in practice, are the two-minute and ten-minute rules. The idea is that if a certain task takes less than two (or ten, depending on your preferred approach) minutes to complete, you should just do it at the beginning of the day. It’s clever because it leaves little time for overthinking or over-planning, but even when I used it for 10-minute tasks, I wasn’t convinced it was effective enough. Some tasks take longer than 10 minutes. I found that the “just do it” approach was helpful for me, but it could be even more effective. So I started thinking more in terms of “do it now” rather than time management.

For some people, making a to-do list and estimating the time it takes to complete each task, as well as identifying the most important and resource-intensive tasks, is all very convenient, but for me, it’s too tedious. Since I switched to the “do it now” approach, I no longer do that. When something comes to mind, I just do it, no matter what it is or how long it will take (within reason). If for some reason I can’t complete the task right then and there, I add it to a note on my phone, which also counts as doing the task right now, although “doing” is actually adding the task to the list.

How it helped me

Last year, my goals mostly revolved around my health and fitness, as well as my living space. I wanted to be healthier and better, which meant more time at the gym and a clean, organized home where I could relax. My “do it now” mindset helped me with both, especially when I started my New Year’s resolutions around this time last year. I didn’t force myself to work out at a specific time or try to squeeze exercise into a structured daily schedule. Instead, I simply told myself that I would go whenever I felt like it, and I wouldn’t overthink it or make excuses. I found myself at the gym during lunch breaks, on Saturday mornings, and late weekday evenings. Whenever the mood struck me, I’d go (or work out at home, usually on my Peloton )—and it worked. The longer I did this, the more working out became a normal, expected part of my day. Remarkably, by autumn, I had developed such a passion for my daily hour of physical activity that I started scheduling it and can now wake up before sunrise just to get it done. I don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t tried my new approach, which puts motivation first.

The same was true for cleaning. There are many methods and approaches to cleaning , and to be clear, each one works for a different type of person. I tried them all, and nothing worked as well for me as cleaning as soon as I thought about it or saw that it needed to be done. If I see a dirty baseboard, I don’t put it off until “living room cleaning day”; I get up off the couch and wipe it down. Developing this habit was difficult because it’s easy to procrastinate and decide to do things during a designated time for cleaning the house, but once I got the hang of it, I noticed something: I no longer needed to set aside a Saturday afternoon for cleaning. I didn’t have to clean anything right away because everything was dealt with as it arose.

This year, my goals for the new year are to maintain the momentum I’ve gained through working out and cleaning, as well as to improve my financial situation and achieve the professional successes I’ve been putting off during my year of self-improvement. Once I’m done with that, I’ll call one of the companies that manages one of my 401k retirement accounts to check on the status of a transfer of funds, something I would have been putting off until the “do it now” era.

Different methods suit different people, but it’s possible to think too much and do too little. My method isn’t based on books , and I admit, sometimes I have to abandon it when it comes to serious, large-scale projects that need to be broken down into stages and systematically completed. But the beauty of it is that it leaves time and mental energy for this when needed.

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