The Limits of Productivity
This past Sunday night I was sitting in my apartment, making tea (I’m 31). The Sunday night right after Thanksgiving I’d argue is one of the preeminent Sunday Scaries nights of the year—although you’ve officially entered the year’s home stretch, the Christmas break suddenly feels like a mini-eternity away1 . Until then, it’s time to get down to business. As I poured my tea2, I started to stress about how I need to get x and y and z done otherwise I’m a total failure and shouldn’t even bother existing.
Then, another part of my mind says: Do I really?
I have long been a person very interested in productivity. In many senses, being consistently productive is the only way to build your capacity to do anything. If you want to fluently speak Italian for example, the end result of you chatting animatedly in Italiano on a Tuscan hillside to an esteemed wine-maker can only happen if you successfully devote years of your life to study—which can then be broken down month-by-month, week-by-week, day-by-day, and even little-decision-by-little-decision. If watching the next episode of Sucession beats out hashing out that business plan for your clothing line, for example—and that type of decision happens more than every once-in-a-while—your business aspirations will almost certainly never get off the ground. And when you’re sitting down on Sunday night wondering why you’re stuck in a job or career you don’t like, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.
Definitionally speaking “being productive” boils down to the ability to accomplish tasks in a consistent and efficient manner—which makes productivity perfectly positioned to be the self-worth/self-esteem proxy for the capitalist-meritocratic society that embodies much of the American economy/the world. If you have a day in which you “get a lot done,” it’s supposedly a good day. If you are a person who tends to always “get a lot done,” you will likely be valued wherever you work, whether it’s a the floor of a Levi’s store or a corner office3 at a multi-national bank.
Moreover, if you are someone who “gets things done” consistently and effectively, our society is significantly likely to value you more than most people.
Over the years I have pored through various ways to be productive, trying out different planning methods and different ways to program my brain4. Some methods have been more successful than others, but the common thread usually seems to be: no matter what I do, I feel like I could always be doing better, always getting more done, always finding a better way to streamline.
Sometimes I view this as a positive thing, related to the idea of continuous improvement in line with the Japanese Kaizen mindset5, or the mid-2010s “Trust the Process” Philadelphia 76ers. But other times, I feel like I’m falling into a trap that modern society seems ill-equipped to ever resolve. Namely, that productivity is supposed the be The Answer, a stand-in for something greater that it cannot really accomplish. So while I think embracing productivity is super important if you want to do anything with your life, I think it’s simultaneously a bit of a false idol. As I see it, there are at least two grand failures of fully embracing the productivity mindset:
The means by which the productivity mindset has been manipulated by companies, people, and the larger system of thought that appears to have enveloped our meritocracy. If “being productive” is the primary focus of your day, month, or year, you don’t have to necessarily think about the big picture; to ask to what end is all of this productivity actually for. The cult of productivity roundly discourages thinking beyond the to do list so-to-speak, which I think this is particularly pernicious and partially explains why smart people don’t have as many moral qualms working for large companies with questionable moral practices6. I’d even argue that those who are super productive are regarded by the larger techno-capitalist system7 as a sort of chosen sect; a bizarre 21st century riff on Calvinism, perhaps. Having—and embracing the ethos of—a high-paying, high-status job that wholeheartedly embraces the productivity mindset is maybe an offshoot of predetermination; because you are one of The Productive, it is your duty to devote all your time to Powerpoint Decks and Slack. I’d also argue it’s is increasingly difficult to frame success in today’s world outside of the productivity mindset, so even if someone might be feeling that this is all a bit of a farce, many of us (millennials) don’t have many tools or framework to think about success in other terms.
The idea that mastering productivity will directly lead to grand fulfillment, or even a modern-day spiritual salvation. In my experience, this is patently untrue. Have you ever finished a to-do list, felt a brief moment of triumph, and then an immediate sense of dread and panic because you thought that accomplishing a bunch of tasks was going to make you feel deeply whole? I think this dovetails into a larger conversation related to the decline of religion and the apparent lack of clear alternative to greater meaning, but I don’t know enough about that to really get into it right now.
A few weeks ago, I went upstate with a my wife, a good friend, and his fiance. We went on a hike (planned in the productivity fashion), then trudged through this incredibly muddy trail. Rain was coming and we were getting to be a bit uncomfortable, so we thought about turning back before the end of the trail. Aided by google, we realized we weren’t too far off from the end. So we decided to trudge forward.
We got to the end of the trail. It’s beauty was the type that words can never do justice. It was as if we were on a plateau overlooking the immaculate possibilities offered by our planet. It took us to the edge of this mountain, but it almost felt like we were suspended in mid-air—a melange of clouds, trees, the earth nonchalantly lounging below us. A gentle, non-imposing reminder that awe and wonder is all around us if only we shut off our laptops for two seconds and notice it’s constantly staring us right in the face. At the edge of this plateau/mountain summit, a guy was down on one knee proposing to his girlfriend. The 6 of us there—the newly engaged couple and the four of us—probably all separately realized that this was some sort of moment that eclipsed many of the moments that preceded it, and will follow. It was a privilege to be able to experience it.
Where the productivity mindset fails spectacularly is in moments like this. You can check off the fact that you got your exercise in, and even the fact went on a hike that you had wanted to go on. But it has no idea what to do with a breathtaking view. It can’t even handle me just sipping my tea on a Sunday night, without thinking about the need to accomplish a series of tasks.
Productivity is essential, but it’s not everything. Not even close, really.
This year is one of those years where there’s basically 4 full weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Major respect for when there’s only 3 weeks.
I’ll drizzle in a little bit of honey, pour the hot water into the mug, the dunk the tea bag in a few times but not leave it in. Nothing worse than when the tea starts to get a bit lukewarm and the tea flavor becomes too overpowering from being left in
Do corner offices even exist anymore? Or is it a ski lodge in Aspen that these types now work from, having the flexibility to work from anywhere combined with the inflexibility to enjoy anything at anytime.
AKA the original iOS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
Until they suddenly quit in the haze of some sort of nervous breakdown, and next you hear they are living in some Colorado Mountain town deliberately being the exact opposite person they were for the previous 15 years. Or, the moral qualms continually get repressed by piles of $$$, and expensive personal and familial lifestyle traps.
This might be the wrong wording, but in this case, what I mean be the greater techno-capitalistic system is: the cohort of tech and financial companies where people get paid a lot, and working there represents some sort of conquering of the meritocracy, and the values that this interconnected space vocally and tacitly endorses