Some people seem to get far more done than everyone else. They also avoid burning out along the way. Tharun is one of them. He runs a creative education platform and manages a creative agency. Most days, he still keeps a clear head.
What makes this interesting is how he does it. His approach is not built on raw willpower. It is not built on long hours either. It runs on a small set of habits. He repeats them in the same order, day after day.
That distinction matters. Most productivity advice focuses on single tricks: one app, one morning ritual, one way to beat procrastination. Tharun’s system works differently. Each habit supports the next one. A good night’s sleep makes the morning routine easier. A clear morning makes the day’s priorities easier to protect.
This article breaks down how Tharun stays productive 98% of every day. It goes section by section. You will see not just what he does, but why each piece holds the rest together.
Who Is Tharun?
Tharun runs The Edit School. It trains creators in video editing and motion graphics. Students move from the basics through to advanced technique. Alongside it, he runs a creative agency called The Boring Edit. That agency works with brands on video content.
Running both at once is not simple. It means juggling client deadlines, student questions, and his own creative work in the same week. That is exactly the kind of pressure that breaks a loose schedule.
He shares his process openly on his Tharun Speaks YouTube channel. He talks through the daily habits behind his output, rather than keeping them private. He has also been honest about the years before this system existed. There were missed deadlines. There were stretched-thin days. There was the constant feeling of running behind.
What changed things was not a sudden burst of motivation. It was building a routine he could repeat without thinking. That system, more than any single trick, is the real reason Tharun stays productive, even in his busiest weeks.
Systems
A system works differently to a single habit. It removes decisions, rather than adding effort. Every choice in a day uses up mental energy, even small ones like what to work on first. Researchers call this decision fatigue. It builds up fast when a day has no fixed shape.
These three habits are the backbone of why Tharun stays productive day after day. Together, they cut down on how many decisions he has to make from scratch.
Developing a Daily Routine
A fixed routine removes the daily question of what to do next. The answer is already decided. Tharun follows roughly the same structure every working day. He has a set start time. He has a set order for tackling tasks. He has a set point where the workday ends.
This is not about rigid, minute-by-minute control. It is about not negotiating with yourself each morning over what comes first. When the shape of the day is already settled, your energy goes into the work itself, not into deciding.
Creating a To-Do List
Every day starts with a written list of tasks. Tharun builds it the night before, or first thing in the morning. Writing it down does two things at once. It clears your head of trying to remember everything. It also gives you one place to check, instead of several.
For someone juggling client edits, student questions, and agency work, a list changes the shape of the day. It is the difference between a day that feels chaotic and one that feels manageable. Crossing items off also gives a small, steady sense of progress. That keeps momentum going through the day.
Using Time-Blocking Techniques
A to-do list tells you what to do. Time-blocking tells you when. Each task on Tharun’s list gets its own slot in the calendar. It does not sit on a loose list that could be tackled at any point, or never.
This matters because tasks without a scheduled slot tend to slide. They slip to the bottom of the day, especially when something more urgent shows up. Blocking time for editing work, client calls, or student feedback changes that. It turns a vague plan into a schedule that actually gets followed, because each task already has its place.
Principles
Systems give a day its shape. Principles decide what fills that shape, and in what order. The three below are less about scheduling. They are more about judgement: what to do first, what counts as a real goal, and what has no place in a working day at all.
Prioritising Important Tasks
Tharun tackles his hardest or most important task first. He does this while his focus is strongest. This is deliberate. Mental energy is not the same at 9am as it is at 4pm.
Difficult, creative work, such as a complex edit or a piece of course content, demands more from your focus than routine admin does. Doing it early means it gets your best attention. It does not get whatever is left over after easier tasks have worn you down. Easier tasks, such as replying to messages, get pushed to later in the day. Energy naturally dips then, and the stakes of a mistake are lower.
Setting Specific and Achievable Goals
A vague goal, such as “work on the course more,” is easy to put off. There is no clear finish line. There is no clear starting point either. A specific goal, such as “finish editing module three by Thursday,” gives you something concrete to aim at. It also gives you a way to know when you’re done.
Tharun builds his daily list around goals like this. Each one is narrow enough to start immediately. Each one is realistic enough to finish in the time available. The gap between a vague intention and a specific goal is often the whole difference. It decides whether a task gets done, or quietly slides to tomorrow.
Eliminating Distractions
Phones, notifications, and open browser tabs all pull focus away from the task in front of you. This usually happens without you noticing. Each interruption costs more than the few seconds it takes to check it. Your attention needs time to settle back into what you were doing.
Tharun removes these triggers before he starts a focused block of work. He does not try to ignore them once they appear. That might mean putting the phone in another room. It might mean closing every tab except the one he needs. It might mean turning off notifications for an hour. Removing the temptation ahead of time is far easier than resisting it in the moment.
Productive Workspace
The space you work in shapes how well you work. Often, it shapes it more than people expect. A cluttered, uncomfortable, or noisy setup adds small frictions throughout the day, and those frictions add up. This is another quiet reason Tharun stays productive: his workspace is part of the system, not separate from it.
Organising and Decluttering the Workspace
A cluttered desk makes it harder to start work. Your eyes and mind have to sort through visual noise first. Only then can you settle into the actual task. Clearing the desk before starting, or at the end of the day before, removes one more excuse to delay.
This does not need to be an elaborate process. A short tidy-up is usually enough. Put away what is not needed. Clear the surfaces. That makes the space feel ready for focused work, rather than one more thing competing for attention.
Choosing a Comfortable and Ergonomic Setup
Long editing sessions and back-to-back student calls mean hours at a desk. Discomfort during that time pulls focus away from the work itself. A chair and desk that support good posture help with this. So does a screen set at a comfortable height. Together, they let you work longer without pain creeping in.
This is not a luxury add-on to the system. Physical discomfort is a distraction, just like any other. A setup that removes it frees up attention for the task at hand.
Minimising Noise and Interruptions
A quiet space protects focus from small interruptions. So does a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Those interruptions build up across a working day, more than people notice at the time.
This matters even more when you manage a team or teach students. Questions and messages can arrive constantly if there is no boundary in place. Clear signals help here. A closed door works. So does a status message showing you’re in a focus block. Either way, the people around you know when not to interrupt.
Morning Routine
Mornings carry an outsized share of the day’s mental energy. That is why Tharun stays productive from the very start, rather than easing in slowly. What happens in the first hour tends to set the tone for everything that follows.
Planning the Day in Advance
Tharun plans the next day the night before. He does not work it out once he sits down to start. This removes the slow, uncertain beginning most people have. For many, the first twenty or thirty minutes go toward figuring out what to even do. Starting the morning with a plan already set means that time goes straight into the work instead.
Starting with the Most Important Tasks
Mornings carry the most mental energy for most people. This is before meetings, messages, and small requests start chipping away at focus. Tharun uses that early window for his hardest task of the day. He does not save it for later, once energy has already dropped.
By the afternoon, willpower is naturally lower. Only the lighter, more routine tasks remain by then. That suits the reduced focus that comes later in the day.
Setting Deadlines for Each Task
Every task on the list gets a rough time limit. This applies even when there is no external deadline forcing one. Work has a habit of expanding to fill whatever time is available. A task with no limit can easily take twice as long as it needs to.
A self-set deadline keeps a task contained, even an informal one. It stops the task eating into time meant for something else.
Power Naps
Naps are one more reason Tharun stays productive through the afternoon slump. Most people simply push through that slump on caffeine. Rather than fighting the dip, he schedules a short rest into the day.
Taking Short Naps to Recharge
A short nap in the early afternoon resets focus for the rest of the day. It works in the same way a proper break resets concentration during a long editing session. Tharun treats it as a scheduled part of the day. It is not an occasional break he allows himself when things get too hard. Building it into the routine, rather than leaving it as an exception, is what makes it reliable.
Keeping Them Around 15–20 Minutes
Length matters here more than people expect. Naps between 15 and 20 minutes have been shown to improve memory and focus. They do this without leaving you groggy afterwards.
Longer naps tend to have the opposite effect. They let you drop into a deeper sleep stage. Waking from that stage leaves you feeling worse than before you napped. Keeping naps short is what makes the difference. It is the gap between a genuine recharge and an afternoon spent shaking off grogginess.
Avoiding Naps Close to Bedtime
A nap taken too late in the afternoon can disrupt night-time sleep. It eats into the tiredness your body needs to fall asleep easily later on. Keeping naps to the early afternoon protects the main sleep schedule. That way, one habit does not end up working against another.
Work-Life Balance
None of these habits hold up for long if work quietly expands to fill every hour available. Part of why Tharun stays productive over the long run is that he treats the boundary between work and everything else as something to actively protect. It does not happen on its own.
Maintaining a Structured Work Schedule
Set start and end times keep work from spreading into the rest of the day. Without them, the day can easily stretch past its natural edges. A defined finishing point forces the day’s priorities to be dealt with inside the time available. That clear line between work and personal time protects both sides of it.
Allocating Time for Personal Activities
Time for hobbies, family, or simple rest is scheduled in deliberately. It is not left to whatever happens to be left over once work is done. When personal time is only ever the leftover, it tends to disappear during busy weeks. Treating it as a fixed part of the schedule keeps burnout from creeping in over a long stretch of demanding weeks.
Avoiding Excessive Work or Partying
Long working hours and heavy socialising look different on the surface. But they draw on the same pool of energy needed for the next day’s focus. Late nights out carry the same next-day cost as late nights spent working. Balance between the two is what keeps output steady over time, instead of spiking and crashing.
High-Protein Diet
Diet is a big part of why Tharun stays productive through a full working day, not just the first few hours of it. Blood sugar swings from the wrong foods can undo a well-planned morning within a couple of hours.
Starting the Day with a Protein-Rich Meal
A protein-rich breakfast keeps energy steady through the morning. This contrasts with the quick rise and crash that follows a sugary one. Eggs, yoghurt, or a protein shake digest more slowly than sugary cereal or pastries. Energy releases gradually as a result, instead of spiking and then dropping an hour later, right in the middle of the morning’s most important work.
Including Lean Meats, Eggs, and Legumes
Meals built around lean meat, eggs, or legumes support steady energy and focus. This holds true across a full working day, not just first thing in the morning. These foods take longer to digest than refined carbohydrates. That means they release energy over hours, rather than in a short burst. Building lunch and dinner around these ingredients, rather than around whatever is quickest to grab, keeps that steady energy going into the afternoon and evening too.
Avoiding Sugary and Processed Foods
Sugary and processed foods cause a sharp energy spike. A crash usually follows within an hour or two of eating them. That crash often lands right in the middle of an afternoon that already needs steady focus. Cutting back on them, especially around midday, helps keep concentration level. It stops the swing between short bursts of energy and sudden slumps.
Quality Sleep
Every other habit in this system leans on one thing underneath it: enough sleep. It is arguably the biggest reason Tharun stays productive at all, since a well-planned morning routine has little to work with after a bad night’s sleep.
Prioritising 7-8 Hours of Sleep
Seven to eight hours of sleep gives the brain the recovery time it needs. That recovery is what lets you focus well the next day. Skipping sleep to fit in more work usually costs more than it saves. Tired focus takes longer to finish the same task. Mistakes made while tired often need redoing anyway. Tharun treats sleep as part of the productivity system, not as time taken away from it.
Maintaining a Consistent Sleep Schedule
Going to bed and waking up at the same time each day trains the body. This includes weekends. Over time, it becomes easier to fall asleep and wake up. An irregular schedule makes both harder, even if the total hours stay the same. Shifting bedtime by hours from one night to the next is enough to disrupt that rhythm.
Creating a Bedtime Routine for Relaxation
A calm routine before bed signals to the body that it is time to wind down. Reading works well. So does light stretching. This beats expecting sleep to arrive right after a screen-lit evening of work. The routine does not need to be long. Even fifteen minutes of a consistent wind-down can make falling asleep noticeably easier.
Goal Setting
The habits above manage a single day. Goal setting connects those days into progress over weeks and months. It’s a big part of why Tharun stays productive on a longer timeline, not just a daily one. It gives the routine something to work toward, rather than just repeating itself.
Defining Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-Bound (SMART) Goals
Tharun uses the SMART goal-setting framework to keep his goals clear. It keeps them grounded, too, rather than vague and easy to drift away from. Specific means naming exactly what you’re aiming for, not a general direction. Measurable means you can tell whether you’ve hit it or not. Actionable and realistic mean the goal is something you can actually start on now. Time-bound means it has a deadline attached, so it does not stretch on indefinitely. A goal built this way is far harder to quietly abandon than a loose intention.
Breaking Down Long-Term Goals into Manageable Steps
A big goal can feel distant and overwhelming, such as growing The Edit School to a new group of students. Splitting it into smaller steps changes that: build the course outline, record the first module, open enrolment. Each finished step builds momentum toward the next one. Each one is also small enough to fit into a single day’s time block, rather than looming over the whole week unfinished.
Tracking Progress and Making Adjustments
Checking progress regularly shows what is actually working. It also shows what needs to change. This can happen weekly, or at set milestones. Without this check-in, it is easy to keep going in the wrong direction for weeks, simply because no one stopped to look. Tracking does not need to be complicated. A short weekly review of what got done, and what didn’t, is usually enough to catch problems early.
Common Mistakes When Copying This System
Borrowing someone else’s routine wholesale rarely works as well as building your own version of it. Copying the routine badly is the fastest way to lose the reason Tharun stays productive in the first place.
- Trying every habit at once, instead of adding one at a time. This usually leads to burning out on the whole system within a week.
- Skipping sleep or naps while keeping the rest of the schedule. This undercuts everything else the system is trying to protect.
- Copying the routine exactly, instead of adjusting the timing to fit your own job and energy levels.
- Giving up after a few days, before a new routine has had time to become an actual habit.
Building better habits also prevents procrastination from creeping back in once the initial motivation fades. That usually happens within the first week or two. Pair that with prioritising self-care, rather than treating rest as optional. The whole system holds up far better over the long run as a result.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Tharun stay productive every day?
Tharun stays productive through a fixed daily routine. It combines time-blocking, a protein-rich diet, short power naps, and 7 to 8 hours of sleep. It also includes SMART goals, tracked on a regular basis. No single habit does the work alone. It’s the combination, repeated daily, that keeps output steady.
What is the 98% in “Tharun stays productive 98% of every day”?
It reflects how consistently Tharun follows his system, not a claim that every day is perfect. No routine survives every day untouched. Illness, travel, or an unexpected crisis will always disrupt it sometimes. A repeatable structure simply means output stays high on nearly all of them, instead of swinging between good days and wasted ones.
Do I need to follow every part of this system?
No. You do not need every habit to see how Tharun stays productive rub off on your own routine. Start with one or two habits that fit your current routine easily. Time-blocking is a good place to begin. So is a fixed morning start. Add more once those feel automatic. Trying to adopt all nine areas at once is one of the most common ways this kind of system falls apart in the first week.
Why does Tharun use power naps instead of coffee?
A short nap resets focus without the later crash that caffeine can cause. That crash is worse in the afternoon. Research backs naps of 15 to 20 minutes for improving memory and alertness. They do this without the grogginess that longer naps bring. A late-afternoon coffee can also disrupt sleep that night, which a short nap does not.
Conclusion
Tharun stays productive 98% of every day by running a system, not by relying on motivation or willpower alone. Each habit in this article supports the ones around it. Sleep makes the morning easier. The morning protects focus for the hardest task. Clear goals give the whole day somewhere to point toward.
You do not need to adopt all of it overnight. Pick one habit from this list. It might be time-blocking, a protein-rich breakfast, or a short afternoon nap. Build from there. Add the next habit once the first one has settled in, so you no longer have to think about it.
About the author: I write about productivity and project management at gmkayange.me. If this system helped, subscribe to my YouTube channel for more breakdowns of how productive people actually work.
