Staying away from “Productivity Porn”

For those who want to do.


The word PORN brings all those sex moves to our mind that adult movie actors perform. If you came here thinking that I’ll be talking about “that” porn, sorry to disappoint you.

Do you spend a lot of time reading inspirational and motivational stories on the internet? Or watching videos on the lives of people who have changed our world? If Yes, then you are a Productivity Porn addict. Its okay, don’t worry. First step towards curing addiction is accepting that you are an addict. Repeat after me, “I am a Productivity Porn addict”. There you go. Now was that so difficult?

I don’t want to write a long article lecturing you about things that you already know. Its just an article about something all of us tend to ignore.

Productivity porn is being addicted to reading stuff on the internet about things that you already know and should be doing something about. Things like “15 tips for increasing productivity”, “10 things entrepreneurs should know” or maybe “How to be the best in bed” are good reads but searching for such things every time you log on…that’s not a good sign now. Is it?

I am not saying that reading all this stuff is bad, rather reading helpful tips on different things and learning from them is not bad but there should be a limit to everything. Generally, people log on to the internet to learn a few things about something they are struggling with. Now, internet contains all sorts of cool stuff like presentations, articles and videos about anything and everything out there. Instead of just reading those damn tips and working on them, we end up in an infinite loop of watching motivational videos and reading articles.

This is how we probably look.

All these near perfect presentations or articles that we go through on the internet inspire us a lot but when it is time to act upon the things that we understood from them, its too late. We either feel really tired because of sitting in front of the computer the whole day or simply bored. The time to implement those things never comes. Hence, productivity decreases.

So let us make a resolution today. Don’t be scared, its nothing like the one you made this New Year’s. From now onwards let us take few steps at a time. We can learn a lot of things from people like Steve Jobs, but not in a day. Starting today (or tomorrow, whatever suits you) note down five points that you learnt, work on them, perfect them and then move forward.

If you want to do something that you really care about, stop reading and trying to remember stuff. Start doing. The best way of learning about anything is by doing it.

If you liked this, share it with others so that we can save them too.

Until next time.

Email me when Varun Puri publishes or recommends stories