Is it normal for productivity to wildly fluctuate from one week, or even one day, to the next? There are days where I hardly get a couple of hours of real work in and others where it's eight hours straight, and I find it hard to "justify" to myself why the former happens if I'm capable of the latter.

I don't know if It's normal, but it happens to me too.

I find the best way to stay productive on the unproductive days is to not push it and just take a break for an hour or two and then come back to it. Im usually able to start being productive after the break.

I think in my case this happens because one of those people you would call a night owl. Im always the most motivated and excited to do things at night and all mornings are slow for me in general... But since working in the morning if the norm, it is what it is...

Yep, my mornings are usually booked with meetings until around lunch.
By the time I get to do anything I'm like, eh... the days half over anyway.

But then you see the deadlines ahead and work out you either jump in and get it done or drown later.

@C0D4 I think part of my problem has been not having deadlines or tangible goals at times. Like I finished some big task and everything else is minor or optional or a long way away and I'm just waiting for the next big thing now. I could work on the little things, but part of my brain says that nobody will notice if I don't.

I was actually in that situation yesterday when I posted this rant but I got a couple of tasks with close deadlines and today I spent most of the working day actually working without much difficulty.

Even every 5 minutes.
There are a few things to considere when talking about productivity, mainly how and what the task at hand makes you feel.

If you discover you are frustrated by anything related to it, like a process, coworkers, the task being annoying, your productivity goes out the window.

Also if you fear anything, like failure, nit being enough ti do it, anything in the lines of that, then your productivity goes out the window.

Productivity is mostly about emotion regulation than anything else.

I have weeks/months of bad productivity 😂