(Click here to listen to the article: Why All The Productivity In The World May Not Matter After All)
You are told that you have to be productive, but how productive is productive?
We have been working for close to 26 years, and we still have a full day of activity. Isn’t that a good enough reason to slow down or just do nothing at all for some of the days?
Let’s find out why productivity needs a break.
This morning, I had lots of plans. One of the major plans was to avoid wasting any time. Normally, I’d take a break in the middle of the morning and go to the cafe for a couple of hours, where there’s no internet, and just paint or chat with someone, maybe take some photographs.
Today, I decided that I was going to be productive, at least more productive than normal. And then something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I started to feel quite wobbly. Perhaps it’s just the heat because it’s summer here in New Zealand, and it’s been very hot recently, and I haven’t slept well at night.
But the wobbliness continued. The first time that I felt even slightly good was by 5 pm that evening. In effect, my very productive day ended up with a lot of lying down and sleeping.
And this lesson is something that I’ve had to relearn time and time again. When we started Psychotactics in the year 2000, we had a really interesting concept. I thought I could write enough articles within five years, and then we’d be well set.
I didn’t think we’d need to do a lot of work after putting in a full five-year sprint, but here we are 26 years later, and there’s still a full day of work, no matter how much work we put in.
It almost feels like a YouTube channel where you have to continuously feed the system. There’s always work. There are always things to do, which is why, at some point, we just have to be non-productive. We just have to wait and see if we can. Especially if there is no client waiting for the work that we’re doing, there is no crazy deadline.
I first realised this concept when we were getting married. Right up until we went on a honeymoon, people were constantly asking me about the deadline and how I could get their jobs done. Then we were gone for a few weeks, and nobody bothered.
The same kind of thing plays out when we go away for a month on holiday: nobody bothers, and neither do we. We don’t feel the need to be productive while we’re away.
It’s possible to live a life where you can be productive for many days in a week and at other times just be completely wasteful. It’s not normal to be productive the whole time, all the time, despite what you are told.
I hope you have a lazy day. I’m probably going to need some more sleep, because I feel that sleep needs some productivity level as well.
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