I deleted my to-do list

I used to end every day the same way. Lying in bed, running through my checklist like some demented accountant.

Did I ship that feature? Reply to those 47 emails? Crush that workout?

If I hit 8 out of 10 things, I felt like a god. If I only hit 3, I was a loser who'd die broke and alone.

Then my niece said something that broke my brain.

We were at the park. I was on a work call, half-watching her on the swings. She runs over and goes: "Jacob, did you see how HIGH I went?"

I hadn't seen sh*t. I was too busy being "productive."

That night, lying in bed doing my mental checklist, I realized something. I couldn't remember a single moment from that day. Not one. Just tasks. Checkmarks. Bullshit.

I was living my life like a video game character grinding for XP, except the game sucked and there was no final boss.

Here's what nobody tells you about productivity porn:

It's making you miserable. And possibly killing you.

No, seriously. The WHO says working 55+ hours a week increases your stroke risk by 35%. In Japan, they have a word for it - karoshi. It literally means "death from overwork."

(We don't have a word for it in America because we're too busy working to name it).

Harvard ran this wild study where they tracked people's happiness throughout the day using an app. Turns out our minds wander 47% of the time. Almost HALF.

And unfortunately, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Doesn't matter if you're working, eating, or banging. If your mind is somewhere else, you're less happy. Period.

So I tried an experiment.

Instead of counting tasks, I started counting moments.

Like when I'm making coffee, I'm making coffee. Not planning my day or checking Slack. Just grinding beans like a caffeinated monk.

When my niece shows me her 47th drawing of a "doggy" (that looks suspiciously like a potato), I'm looking at that potato-dog like it's the Mona f-ing Lisa.

The results were stupid.

First week, I got "less done" but felt better than I had in years. By week two, my girlfriend asked if I was on drugs. (I wasn't, but presence hits different).

Here's what I learned:

Rule #1: Your phone is a time thief Every notification is someone else's priority hijacking your moment. I started leaving it in another room during dinner. Revolutionary, I know.

Rule #2: Pick 3 things, not 30 Your to-do list isn't a CVS receipt. Three important things per day. That's it. Everything else is gravy.

Rule #3: Build presence triggers I take 3 deep breaths before entering my house. Sounds dumb, works great.

Being present actually makes you MORE productive. Not less.

Studies show people who prioritize time over money are significantly happier. And happy people get more done because they're not burning mental energy on anxiety and FOMO.

Those 4-day workweek experiments everyone's talking about? People maintained the same output while being way less miserable. Turns out humans aren't factory machines. Shocking.

Remember that Harvard study that followed people for 80 YEARS to figure out what makes a good life?

It wasn't productivity. It wasn't money. It wasn't even success.

It was relationships. And you can't build relationships while checking your phone every 3 minutes like a crack addict.

Look, I'm not saying become a monk.

I still chase goals. I still want to build cool stuff and make money. But I stopped measuring my days by output and started measuring them by... actually experiencing them.

Because here's the thing - on your deathbed, you won't wish you'd answered more emails. But you might wish you saw your girlfriend shoot that 3.

Philosopher Alan Watts said it best: "Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence."

-Jacob, The Renewal