Productivity Will Destroy Your Life
Reviewing Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
I have been reading self-help books since I discovered my flaws as a human being and that there are books that can solve your every problem (or at least describe your problem and explain there’s really nothing else you can do about it.)
That is to say, I’ve ventured into many self-help books:
One to solve my inability to be disciplined.
One to teach me that my trauma isn’t my fault.
One to teach me that my trauma is my fault.
One to teach me that my trauma is my parents’ fault.
One to teach me to be a more productive human through habits.
One to teach me to be more productive through time blocking.
One to teach me to be more efficient by outsourcing everything.
One to teach me to be more productive in order to make more money.
There is a book for everything wrong with you that often contains a map to help you “solve” your problems, change the flaw, and make you as close to a God as possible.
But perhaps the most lucrative self-help topic is productivity. Like perfection, it is something that we unconsciously want to attain. To be more productive is to be akin to industry giants or at least the person you watch on TikTok that wakes up at 4:30 am and performs more tasks than what you typically manage in a week (or is that just me?).
Productivity always piques my interest. I want to be a more productive employee because then I can be more accomplished. I want to be more productive in my writing because then I can create more quality content. I want to be a more productive woman because then I can be more beautiful, fit, healthy, friendly, driven, and finally achieve the flawlessness demanded of my gender.
Productivity, as told to me, is the key for happiness, wealth, beauty, intelligence, cleanliness. So of course I pick up another book that will give me the key to unlock my productivity potential.
So, yes, my history with productivity and improving it is extensive; and exhausting. When I picked up Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, I expected much of the same. Like a productivity masochist, I was ready to dive into another book to exploit my flaws and learn how to finally achieve a new level of productivity.
But my expectations were very, very wrong. This book would describe to me many new ways of thinking about productivity and understanding what that really means as a person who has about 4000 weeks to live (less, really, because I am 1500+ weeks into my life).
A Simple Mathematical Equation to Measure Your Guilt Based on Your Inability to be Productive
Keep a running tally in your mind of every hour (minute would be better) that you were not productive.
Use the following equation: Time Wasted x 2 = how many minutes you need to feel guilty for not doing enough shit today.
Take your answer from #2 and exercise any of the following during that time:
Think about all the things you did not get to
Think about all the things everyone else got done (probably)
Think about your failures (even ones from a really long time ago)
Extra Credit: List out the things that you now need to do tomorrow to make up for both time wasted and time feeling guilty.
Instead of working harder to be more productive, Oliver Burkeman, the author and fellow productivity survivor, invites us to shift our perception and current understanding of doing more. He describes how this unreasonable fixation of doing more and being more is not conducive to our humanity all the damn time. Here are a few points that spoke to me personally:
Reaching new levels of productivity never ends. It. Never. Ends. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before, but every time I have done something to be more efficient, I find a way to fill that time up. Then search for a new way to be more productive with the things I have now filled back up.
So, really, there is no way to lessen your load. You are always going to feel like time is running out and you need to accomplish more. So long as you are feeding that feeling, it will be just like the monster where you cut one head off and two more appear. This never-ending cycle just gets to be exhausting.
This recognition of behavior for me was enlightening. While I’ve made the connection that my To Do List will never really end, the idea that I can never reach peak productivity and efficiency never has. It has been an endless, tiring chase. And I’m not sure that it has been a good use of my time in the long run. Burkeman points out how some problem solvers of time wasters have actually destroyed some ways that we do life (like food delivery means we never meet our community). Instead, some of these “more productive ways of doing things” have really just become capitalist machines that prey on our socially conditioned belief that we must always be seeking time-saving measures and tools.
You are not going to be the next Tolstoy (or super mega ground-breaking world-changing [insert your field here]). I have procrastinated so many things because I want to be perfect. I have not tried things because I only wanted to be great and amazing at them. I have demanded levels of perfectionism from myself that I would never demand of others and has prevented me from engaging in so many creative endeavors. The weight of being able to “leave a mark on society” or to be great is so heavy.
And realistically, most of us will not achieve that. We will likely pass on with impacts on a much smaller scale. But, I believe, impacts all the same. Burkeman writes about people that spend their lives working on projects that will likely take so long that they do not get to see the full completion in their lifetimes, yet they continue to contribute. There is so much pleasure taken out of life because you are waiting for greatness. You are trying to wait until it is the optimal time, but the optimal time is now. You don’t need to wait until you’ve mastered something else ahead of time or reached that milestone to start now. Your four thousand weeks are for you to decide.
There is a season for everything. At the time of writing this I am trying to: learn piano, read everyday, reach new levels of fitness, scrapbook my trip to Japan, decorate my home, oh and start this newsletter. I am trying to do it all! Perhaps a huge symptom of productivity-itis is trying to do it all. But what about paring it down a bit, eh? Like maybe we spend some time doing one or two of those for a few months, and then we rev up the next one. Because yes, I am trying to do all those things but I am trying to do them all at 100%.
As you can imagine, I do not have enough time in the day. I don’t normally have enough time to do half of that every day. Which gets really depressing to look at when you want to accomplish everything and thrive off of completing tasks (me, I do.) But instead, a more sustainable way of living is often to do less; with the understanding that there will be a different season when you’re ready to work on something else (until there isn’t!! Right?!? Lol, that is the productivity sickness talking *cries in recovery).
You will always have an imbalance of time. Meaning that list of “Have To’s” is probably always going to be there; it’s probably never going to end. I’m thinking of the weekly laundry that needs doing on Sundays, the dog that needs walking daily, the dinner that needs to be made (or at least acquired) daily. Not to say that I dislike all these things, but they often feel like they’re taking over my life. So the natural thing is to accept them at the very least, and maybe even evolve to take pleasure in these mundane, simple tasks. That’s a maybe.
But more importantly, recognizing that you will have an imbalance of what needs to be done and what you want to get done. Yet, our life is not meant for only the Have To’s. We need the Want To Do List to speak a little louder to us and for us to listen. Because we have limited time and we need to do more of what we want because we want to and not let our need for productivity overrun our life. Of course, I recognize that this can only happen where it can, not just simply because we want it to happen. Some are more fortunate than others in this area.
Resting for the sake of increasing productivity--what about resting for the sake of resting? An impossible concept on the capitalist train of productivity. Imagine resting just to rest. How many times have we heard to go rest so you can be more productive later. As if that could be the only reason. Why should all our actions be in the pursuit of more productivity?
You might have noticed that these takeaways have nothing to do with making lists, setting timers, or some other grand method designed to make us into more productive creatures. The philosophies and deep-dives in this work are to give us a new perspective on what it means to be spending our limited time as humans right now. I loved this book for that very reason.
I would add that I don’t think productivity is evil. It’s necessary and fulfilling in so many ways. I feel good when I am productive. But it’s the otherside that needs help: being unproductive is not bad, it is just as good as being productive. It has the ability to be as rewarding as our very best productive days, without the exhaustion. Something about the balance, something about this way of thinking: that we need to accept that we don’t have to be productive.
Post-reading Four Thousand Weeks, I feel renewed in my life. A little less weighed down that I need to do more and be everything and everywhere. Because the truth is we only get this time once and it is so, so short. How much do we want to waste on trying to be more productive? Surprisingly, I do not want to waste another week on it. If you need me, I’ll be recovering from being really productive writing this review ;)
Any guesses for how many times I wrote ‘productivity’ and ‘productive’ in this newsletter?
Be sure to go read or listen to Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I personally listened to the audiobook from my library but plan to buy a copy--it was that good. And more people in my life need to read this!