The Fine Art of Productivity
I look over at the books on my friend’s coffee table and there proudly stands, “The 5 AM Club’. Declaring how you can ‘crush’ your day by rising early, his girlfriend snaps, “It really works!”
I’m sure that it does. But personally, I have no desire to be awake, let alone doing squats, at such an ungodly hour. And it would seem that I’m not alone.
Many are rethinking personal productivity altogether. Like so many things productivity is relative. At one point in time, four hours of hunting was a good day’s work. Today some claim that four hours of email is.
Shadows of Truth
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, a prisoner escapes and discovers a whole new world. Since being held captive as a child, the shadows on the stonewalls had just been representations of reality. Observing firsthand the bustle of the walkways, the sun rise and set, and other wonders of the natural world — he returns excitedly to the cave to free his former prison mates from the prism of their minds.
But the prisoners weren’t having any of it. The shadows don’t lie! They cast what they believed to be the truth and anything to the contrary would completely upend how they made sense of the world.
In a similar vein, one-time productivity hackers (myself included) are being challenged with another view. The shadows we’ve been gazing at on our own walls were merely theories about what it means to be productive. When we shift our paradigm, we see that it’s less about getting more done and more about getting less done with absolute care.
Sweating the Small Stuff
This time last year I was bombarded with requests to run virtual seminars (I guess they call them webinars) about working smarter, not harder. I pulled out all my tips and tricks and shared what I thought would help people work better. But I failed to see the changes stirring within so many. I didn’t appreciate that all of these hacks required a deep intention. I knew the words but I didn’t know the music.
While I do appreciate the benefits of getting shit done in a ridiculously focussed manner, it feels now like the ‘interruptions’ are the work. These deviations, conversations, excursions not only help me percolate but often lead to greater enjoyment and better outcomes. There is less panic and more acceptance. Less structure and more space. Less heavy-handedness and more light-heartedness.
A Contribution
Benjamin Franklin had one question he asked in the morning (What good shall I do today?) and one question he asked at night (What good have I done today?). Instead of clear-eyed goals of what we want to get done, maybe we could focus more on clear-eyed acceptance of what matters most.
We might appreciate how technology helps us save time, connects us on a colossal scale, educates us in novel ways, and endlessly entertains us. And while we’ve become more productive as consumers, we haven’t necessarily as humans.
Personal optimization may fade into the background as personal challenge slides into the foreground. While cranking out more may feel good for a time, possessing a connection to what I do is timeless. ‘Doing the work’ on the person I’m becoming holds more utility than crossing off another item on my bottomless to-do list.
The conflict between doing and not-doing need not exist. Because like any system of energy it depends on the tension between opposites. Whether baking banana bread for the family, busting out a client presentation, or breaking away from it all — what matters is how you do it. Action and non-action can both be effortless.
What are we willing to sacrifice in the name of efficiency? If we stay true to ourselves and our nature — we can see that the shadows are approximations. Sometimes it’s not about doing, but just being the person we are.
And on that note, I don’t know about you but I have a dinner to attend to :)
