Apologia for Productivity
It’s one of the most spoiled terms of today’s language. Writing ‘to do lists’, listening to podcast and videos about how to do more in less time, reading books about how to cook while doing something else and so on. The Western world is always on the go and we forgot how to actually make our time valuable without doing at least things at the same time. We think that this is called balance, that if we can work while doing something else it's just a win-win. But what would it feel like if we took a step back? Do we work to live or do we live to work?
The way we interpret the word "productivity" is the biggest key: the standard human being can actually only do a few things really well at the same time, and some of them will not be perfect anyways. When we force our brain to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, we get stressed and we don't actually manage to do them all as well as we would like. Is that really considered productive? Do we really want to do a bunch of things badly instead of choosing a few and do them really well? In fact, I would say that that is the opposite of productive.
Do we really not have time to adjust our ways? Sometimes the best thing we can do is to stop for a minute and think about the quality of what we are doing, how it can benefit us, and once we've cleared that out, keep going at a pace that we feel comfortable with. Sometimes it really comes down to quality over quantity.
Most of the Western world is so fond of its stress and fast pace that it often takes a huge event, like a heart attack due to too much stress, for people to understand that this is not the natural way of living. In fact, it’s not even pleasurable. Have you ever heard about stress addicts? They are those people who thrive on tight deadlines, who purposely leave things until the last minute and who can’t physically have one minute of free time in their day. They think they are being productive, they are very proud of themselves and fairly they are probably succeeding in life. But at what cost? Are they even able to enjoy what they worked so hard to achieve? Is it actually worth it? Well, the answer is, when you’re too busy tackling all your chores in the list, you are probably not getting the whole experience of life. And yes, you might be productive in the sense that you are doing a lot in your day, but no one is going to give you a golden star for that. Sometimes you just have to give it to yourself by enjoying what you work for.
We could restore the true meaning of the word ‘productivity’, therefore re-learn how to live and thrive not only by putting effort in our inputs, but also by enjoying the outputs.