“I Write for 3 Hours a Day, Fucking Period.”

I don't do yoga or drink tea or stretch my knobby knees.

The word “productivity” gives me diarrhea. (God, will I ever spell that right?)

It reminds me of accountants—specifically, one named Ed, who wears a pocket protector, and is trying to account for my every minute. “But, where were you between the minutes of 13:24 and 13:52?????”

I’ll tell ya where I was, Ed: I WAS OUT KEYING YOUR CAR.

That’s what all of these productivity tools—like Pomodoro timers—have always felt like to me: “time accountants.” And, nobody wants to invite those freakshows to Thanksgiving.

I know, I know: I should be more mature. More mature and put together, like those wunderkinds who color code their daily planners and pack away their summer clothing and cut the crust off little triangle sandwiches to feed to the neighborhood kids. Listen, if your kid comes around here, I’m giving it a beer.

So, PRODUCTIVITY. Are you productive? Are you feeling productive right now?

Fall always feels like my most productive time—even though I am not, as it were, marking off how many minutes I spent doing kegels while writing in my ‘morning pages’ and sipping a cup of tea that tastes like ballsack while pretending to like yoga. Is this a requirement for being an enlightened person? Can I opt out of everything, except for when it’s time to stress binge salt and vinegar chips? That happens eventually, right? Because that’s the highlight of my day.

“She’s not self-actualized at all,” they whisper.

“No,” I whisper back, “but I still like myself more than you.”

Ohhhhhh, burn! She’s out here today with a flamethrower! That’s because I’ve been writing on the internet for 14 years now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the same generic article about the same generic advice, and how they structure their day in the same generic way. Nothing on this topic feels fresh and insightful, anymore, because everyone is guilting themselves into not looking at their phones first thing in the morning, and not answering emails first thing in the morning, and not making other people’s emergencies your own, first thing in the morning, and not doing anything except Enlightened People Activities, which include but are not limited to:

• Meditation

• Morning pages

• Tea

• Yoga

• Stretching

• Manifesting

• Watching your own brain waves (that’s a thing???)

• Journaling

• Tapping

• Oil pulling

• Wrapping yourself in a blanket to mimic the womb and slowly rocking yourself back and forth to the sound of a heartbeat while trying to ignore the propane guy knocking at the front door

• Cupping

• Walking

• Peloton-ing

• Fanning yourself in your spa-like bathroom

• Slathering $400 of Goop products over your dewy, moisture-filled skin

• Spritzing essential oils all over your cat and petting it for precisely 36 minutes straight

• Drinking 4 gallons of cucumber water infused with Deepak Chopra’s pit sweat

• Googling “how to EFT tap” because wonder if you did it wrong?????????

What, do I sound cynical?

I am cynical, which is what makes me a real joy.

Because the truth is—so much of this is prohibitive or unrealistic or just plain old undesirable for the everyday person who’s got kids and jobs and budgets and doctor’s appointments and ingrown hairs and breakfast and school and trash cans and deadlines.

Yet, it’s still easy to feel guilty for not having a highly developed “morning soul practice” while, in the meantime, you can barely find a clean bra.

Me?

I’m a fan of “simple-ass time management,” by which I mean: I figure out next obvious thing, and then I do it.

This is highly underrated.

My friend Andee always talks about the sacredness of “chop wood, carry water.” It ain’t glamorous. It ain’t shiny. It ain’t marketable. And, it ain’t something most people want to do. They want to have six colonics and think it’s going to help them write their novel. But, you know what helps you write your novel?

You chop wood, and you carry water.

A little bit.

Every day.

Because it’s the next obvious thing.

So much of what we do with all of our time, every day, is tangential to the real work we want to accomplish. We’re fluffing our egos and we’re organizing our houses and we’re planning in our diaries and we’re drinking our apple cider vinegar and we’re stretching our knobby knees and we’re writing about how we want to be writers and we’re thinking about how someday we’ll be writers and we’re asking other people what their best advice is on being a writer and we’re reading things that other writers have written and we’re Googling book deals and we’re tapping our temples and we’re manifesting our futures and we’re Peloton-ing the stress away from procrastinating the real work that we aren’t doing—because we’ve been doing so much to prepare, so much to ready ourselves, so much to coach ourselves into actually convince ourselves to do the things we want to do with our lives.

Is it any wonder no one has any time?

So much of the stuff we fill our lives with every day is the equivalent of mental throat clearing; a psychological gargling to prepare ourselves for the real work we want to be doing.

You know what’ll prepare you to do the work?

Doing the work.

This is how I wrote The Middle Finger Project book: by sitting down and writing for three hours in the crack-ass of morning, whether I liked what I wrote or not. Whether I thought I was a good writer or not. And whether I had other pressing things to be doing that day, or not. Because, yes, sometimes dreams requires selfishness. And sometimes, being anything less is no longer an option if you don’t want to go down in flames.

Real time management isn’t about scheduling, it’s about picking something in your life that matters enough to you to care about. If you pick something that matters to you, and you commit to something that matters to you, you will want to prioritize it. You won’t flake on yourself. You won’t put it on the back burner. You won’t let 407 days go without doing the thing.

You will delight in the simple act of chopping wood, and carrying water.

Because sometimes, that’s all you have to do to succeed. It doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it.

You do a little bit every day, without overthinking it or feeling guilty for not doing more.

Without doubting the work.

Without failing yourself.

And one day, you’ll wake up with this thing you’ve created—not because you saged the room, or you buttered your ass, or you drank tea instead of coffee, like the civilized intellectual you are.

But, because teeny, tiny acts add up to big, courageous ones, over time.

And maybe, for once?

Thinking small isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

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P.S. Kegels are passé, aren’t they. Well, don’t worry. No one actually does them, anyway.

P.P.S. Wait, do YOU do them?!