JUSTIN ROGERS

Post Category:

Productivity

The working out is in the doing.

March 15, 2026

One of my favourite flavours of procrastination is planning. There’s an action I know I need to take and when I finally get a moment to take the action, I spend the whole time planning.

Now, this isn’t always a bad thing. The whole “spend time sharpening the axe” thing is true and valid.

But if you find yourself never cutting any trees down you might have yourself a problem.

If we get trapped in the planning phase and find ourselves stuck “working things out” it’s probably time to just jump in and do it.

Just imagine yourself at a gym. You don’t have to work anything out to work out.

The working out is in the doing.

It’s time to stop planning, I think.

Time tax

March 12, 2026

There’s a little secret your calendar is telling you.

It’s called ‘time plus tax’… and it’s not named after ‘taxing’ tasks. It’s the secret extra time we don’t account for.

Maybe it’s just me, but I am REALLY good at under-estimating the time a task will take. Today I had a website update to make and I allocated one hour for the job.

It took two hours

And this isn’t the exception. I look at most tasks and it takes 1.5 – 2x as long as expected.

So I’m adding tax. It makes me feel way less productive at the start of the day (”Oh no, I’ve only got time for a few things”)

But I feel like a boss-eagle-lord at the end of the day.

Add tax to your calendar and see how much more realistically productive you feel.

How to get quicker

March 9, 2026

How to get quicker: minimise decisions you need to make.

Each choice we make is a bit of brain power spent. I recently had about 180 documents to process and I began by picking and choosing which to process next.

This felt more efficient because I could create some structure to what I did and in what sequence… but actually charting my journey on the fly was massively slowing me down. All the little decisions were stealing time and brain power.

So I made ONE choice that eliminated all the rest: just work my way down the list.

It meant when a particularly tricky part came up, I couldn’t skip it for a less tricky one- I had to do it because it was the next one on the list!

It felt harder initially but once I got over myself and just committed to my choice, it was fine.

Eliminate decisions- make one to get rid of the rest.

Time doesn’t fly when you can’t wait

March 3, 2026

Remember how LONG it took for Christmas to come when you were an excited kid?

Or maybe you remember a time that a month flew by in what seemed like a day.

I love how time stretches and squishes based on our experience, expectations and focus.

Here’s a little trick I’ve been playing with recently to capitalise on this. My goal with this is to make time stretch when I want that and make it zip by when I need it to do that. So here’s the what you do: begin a task that you really care about completing, that will take a few weeks of necessary hours (no short cuts) and that won’t get done if you don’t put in the time.

We’ve just described a task that requires all the time you can get.

So we want to make sure we perceive as much of that time as possible, so we get it done, right?

So the next step is to put something REALLY exciting at the end of the deadline. A treat, an adventure or an experience you cannot WAIT to get to.

Now you’re playing with your time perception: it’ll take forEVER to get to the treat so now you can use all that perceived ‘extra’ time to complete the project.

Weird and magic, aye?

3 Steps to making

February 25, 2026

Making something? Here’e a quick set of questions I run it through to increase my clarity and likelihood of following through.

1. What is the output?

This helps me understand what the end product actually looks like. Helps me to know when I’m done and what specifically to shoot for.

2. Why do I love this?

Helps me plug into passion. When in the weeds of creation it’s easy to forget why you love something.

3. Who is it for?

I borrowed this from the great Seth Godin. This helps me get clear on the purpose of the thing, what value it brings to the world and how I can provide that value in an even sharper way in the creation process.

There you have it. Try those out:

What’s the output

Why do I love this

Who is it for?

Quality Time

February 24, 2026

Quality time is time spent on good things.

Quality time could be 5 minutes.

Quality time is also turning ordinary time into durations that feel more productive. I find that an hour of uninterrupted work can feel hellishly unproductive. But if, in the middle of the hour, I go for a 5 minute walk or have a stretch break, the time (which is now shorter) feels much better,

We can transform the feeling of time with what we surround it with.

How do you turn ordinary time into extraordinary time?

Make your move

February 11, 2026

I love setting goals. Where the rubber meets the road though, is in the system.

A system is the set of repetitive tasks or the sequence that takes you inevitably to your goal.

And a system starts with a first move.

So if you can figure the goal, the system and the first move, then your only job is to stick to the system.

When it comes time to do your little bit for the day, you have to keep the end goal in mind.

Set the goal. Find the system. Make your move.

Be directionally correct

January 31, 2026

I’ve just started a business accelerator program for Online Kapa Haka. I’ll be coached and taken through training across this year and one of the first things they talked about is to not worry about being perfect- but just to be directionally correct.

One of our tasks in the program is to create various content assets for the business. So with that we don’t have to make each one perfect, we just need to ensure we’re in the right direction.

So as long as I’m talking about education and culture and not dinosaurs I’m doing okay.

Though I bet I could make dinosaurs connect somehow…

Don’t be perfect! Let’s just move in the right direction!

Tick ‘em, boy!

January 30, 2026

Do you like to do lists?

Yeah, I do too. I noticed recently that I have a reluctance to tick things off.

I come to the end of a task, I look at the item on the list and for some reason I don’t quite believe I finished the job.

Weird aye?

I found out it was because the names I gave each item were open ended. They were things like

“Make a start on project X”

Or

“Feel prepared for event Y”

I’d make a start or do some prep but I never felt worthy to tick them off!

So not only am I learning the art of better defined outcomes, but also the faith to rock them off!

Useful metrics

January 25, 2026

Measuring things is useful. But not all metrics are useful at all times.

Like anything, it depends on your outcome.

How many likes you get on a video might not be a useful metric when you’re using the video to explore an artistic idea for yourself.

But if you made the thing for the likes, you ought to measure them.

Weighing yourself mightn’t be helpful… but rating yourself on a scale of 1 – 10 on how comfortable and strong your body feels might be.

To know what to measure we must know what we’re after. And to measure the right thing, we have to be strong enough to only care about the thing we are actually measuring.

Some metrics are louder than others. Real growth comes when you can listen to only what matters for your journey.

Useful, inspiring and cool things

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