Think You’re Crushing It? The Top 5% Of Productivity Gurus Swear By Avoiding THESE 11 Surprising Time-Wasters—Can You Guess What They Are?
Added on November 4, 2025 inASTROLOGY CARDS
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Ever get that feeling your productivity is more about running in circles than actually getting anywhere? Yeah, me too. In this hyper-speed culture where busyness is crowned king and doing more is somehow “better,” it’s easy to confuse frantic motion with real achievement. But here’s the kicker: the most effective, high-flyers—the top 5%—know the sneaky habits that quietly drain your mojo without you even noticing. It’s like Mercury retrograde messing with your morning routine, throwing your focus into cosmic chaos before you’ve even sipped your coffee. What if the secret to lasting productivity isn’t grinding harder but quitting these 11 energy-sapping blunders instead? Ready to flip the script and take back control of your calendar, your brain, and your sanity? Buckle up—this isn’t your typical to-do list spiel. LEARN MORE.
We live in a culture obsessed with productivity, one that often conflates busyness with success and equates doing more with being better. But what if the secret to genuine productivity involves a different approach?
The top performers, the ones who consistently achieve their goals without burning out, know which habits quietly sabotage progress. When you can identify which efforts are truly serving you and which ones are simply consuming your energy, everything starts to change.
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Your morning sets the tone for everything that follows. When you reach for your phone first thing, you’re handing control of your attention to algorithms, other people’s priorities, and whatever chaos the internet decided to serve up. Don’t let someone else’s agenda colonise your brain before you’ve had a chance to use it.
A 2022 study explained that this habit disrupts the brain’s natural relaxation cycle after sleep, and can lead to anxiety, a feeling of being rushed, and reduced cognitive performance for the rest of the day. Bombarding your brain with messages, emails, and other stimuli right away triggers puts your brain in a fight-or-flight mode that is harder to disengage from throughout the day.
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Your calendar is not a garbage can that anyone can dump appointments into. When your time belongs to everyone but you, don’t be shocked when you achieve nothing and find yourself regularly annoyed at yourself. Your calendar should protect your priorities, not advertise your availability to every time vampire.
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According to Jennifer S. Wilkov, expert on productivity and self-expression, “Time blocking is not just for you. It sets a boundary for everyone else. This is your time to get what you want to be done without being interrupted.”
You’re not a day-time vigilante on call — that ping can wait. The email isn’t as urgent as you think it is. That Slack message isn’t life or death. Stop interrupting deep work to acknowledge Kevin from HR’s cat meme.
That can wait, because you and your progression are the priority. Turn it off, like it’s a nuclear bomb with ten seconds to blow.
Attending seven meetings and answering 94 emails isn’t productivity. It’s performance art for people confused about what needs the highest degree of attention. Real productivity is about creating results that matter for you, not merely doing more.
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According to health and habits expert Colby Kultgen, the confusion between being busy and being productive is rooted in a dangerous cultural narrative. Kultgen emphasizes that “working hard feels productive, but it can be deceptive.”
Motivation is massively overrated in the modern age. The top 5% don’t wait to feel motivated. They do what they set out to do anyway, and what could be described as ‘motivation’ shows up later, because they did it.
Motivation increases when you have a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Research shows people are more motivated to avoid a loss than to gain an equivalent amount, a principle used by some apps to get users to stick to goals by imposing a financial penalty for failing.
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Every yes to something meaningless is a no to something that matters. Keep overcommitting and wondering why you’re exhausted and getting nowhere.
Clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen explains that people-pleasers operate from a place of seeking approval and validation. “People-pleasers rely on others’ approval to feel good about themselves. They can’t say no for fear of feeling guilty or worrying that others will think they’re selfish and inconsiderate,” she notes.
The human brain doesn’t multitask. It task-switches badly. You’re not being efficient when you juggle. You’re simply being slow at multiple things simultaneously.
The brain isn’t capable of handling two attention-demanding tasks simultaneously. What feels like multitasking is actually rapid switching between tasks. A Stanford study found that habitual multitaskers are worse at filtering out irrelevant information.
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Your brain needs rest. Your pinkie needs rest, too. The most productive people take breaks, walk, breathe, and come back sharper. In fact, they view breaks as part of the whole package. Stop running on fumes and calling it dedication.
According to psychologist Nick Wignall, working in marathons is one of the biggest productivity killers. Instead, truly productive people break their work into focused sprints with built-in breaks and positive reinforcement between each one.
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Reading productivity books while producing nothing is like watching cooking shows as you order Uber Eats for the fourth time that day. Sure, get inspired, but don’t allow consumption to take up more than 25% of the time you spend dancing the rope between consuming and creating.
Research shows that creating and consuming are a necessary balance, and a focus on one over the other can be detrimental. Be intentional about what and how much you consume. Unfollow accounts that drain you and set time limits on apps to avoid mindless scrolling.
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If your friends think wanting more makes you weird and obsessive, find new friends. You can’t soar with eagles when you’re hanging out with stunted pigeons.
Perfect conditions do exist: In that dream you had two weeks ago. The top 5% started messy, scared, and unprepared, and they’re totally okay with that.
Much of this has to do with believing in their ability to handle things when it gets hard. They don’t wait to see others doing it before they start. They felt weird and just started anyway. You must get comfortable with the idea that starting and returning to that thing, day after day, will rarely feel comfortable. You can do this.
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Alex Mathers is a writer and coach who helps you build a money-making personal brand with your knowledge and skills while staying mentally resilient. He’s the author of the Mastery Den newsletter, which helps people triple their productivity.
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