The Origins of Equinox Planning
Welcome to my sinister plan for chill productivity. Wait. Sinister? Maybe not, but it feels a bit subversive.
Chaos tamer, not a productivity guru
The word “productivity” makes me want to run for the chaotic, disorganized hills. Something about it is compelling, yet the concept is a tool of capitalism. Productivity originally meant economic productivity. Being a productive member of society meant being a good consumer and feeding the engines that build wealth, not for you but for the brazen billionaires.
There is one sort of labor which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed; there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labor. Thus the labor of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labor of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. — Adam Smith, 1776
To be More Productive is to accept this mentality: To “add value” is the only thing worth doing, and for your master’s profit, of course.
Somehow, the productivity culture that sprang up in the late 1990s conspired to turn the concept into a personal development niche. Productivity became a strange mix of self-care and professional acumen. The antidote to the influx of information that came with the internet was to improve productivity. Rather than turn down the volume, we collectively chose to battle the firehose with systems. We would GTD if it killed us.
Inbox Zero was a symptom of this productive way of life. Mastering productivity and taming your inbox became a weird badge of honor. The empty inbox was the point, not the information you had to wade through to get to this venerated state.
The fact that the early 2000s productivity gurus were mainly white dudes with a strange affinity for the Stoics should tell you something about how productivity itself is a function of the patriarchy. We shall conquer our email because we are conquerors. We will win because we have already won. This bounty is ours to take.
By 2010, the cult of productivity was well entrenched across the blogs and burgeoning podcasts, and I was a convert.
Why I can’t seem to GTD
I started imposing productivity systems on myself back in the 1980s. The first time I organized my to-do lists in a color-coded Trapper Keeper was around 1981, in the fourth grade. My problem, I thought, was a lack of structure and discipline. Lacking structure or discipline in my family, I tried to make my own. It did help for awhile, but it did not seem to resolve my anxiety and lack of organization.
There was more chaos as I became a teen, and the expectations to transform myself into a productive member of society increased. What I wanted to BE when I grew up went from a whimsical fantasy to an urgent requirement. What would I do to become “productive?” How would I make money? How would I survive?
Survival felt a bit tenuous after my grandmother died of cancer when I was twelve. She had been my primary parent and biggest fan. When she was gone, I was released into my mother’s chaotic realm as her schizophrenia bloomed, with its cast of characters living in her head and imagined threats from every quarter.
I found that no list of New Year resolutions or aspirational study habits could combat the internal and external chaos. I became a poor student — an unproductive member of society. I carried this not-quite-functional behavior along with depression and anxiety into adulthood. Every day was a battle against entropy. It felt like an impossibility to make long-term plans or big goals when I was barely getting out of bed or keeping myself out of poverty.
When I started reading David Allen and Merlin Mann back in the oughts, I thought they were onto something, but it was very hard to see how 43 folders or an empty inbox could calm the chaos I carried inside me. Still, I saw the value in managing the external chaos to avoid a complete shutdown. I started reading blogs and setting up task managers and folders, and I even bought a label maker. Who doesn’t love a label maker?
My 43 folders sat labeled but empty while internal chaos ruled my life. Still, somehow, I prevailed and got stuff done. I had an internal system that did not conform to the rhythm of weekly reviews and daily planners. I was doing “productivity” my way.
The reluctant project manager
My years in a digital agency taught me something about balancing competing goals. With a local tech giant as our primary client, we often had multiple big-budget projects to manage with our six-person staff and spate of external contractors. I surprised myself by becoming adept at juggling schedules and budgets across a dozen or more concurrent projects. I always felt like I was on the verge of failure, but beyond a few snafus, I never did fail.
I learned from that role that it is unwise to try to track and manage more than a few big projects at once. While I had little choice in that context — we could not afford to hire more project managers or turn down work — I have tried to live by that rule ever since. Doing a few things well is better than churning out mediocre, buggy, or ineffective work. Taking on projects ill-suited to our team’s skills and interests dragged down morale, and over-stuffed schedules led to errors and burnout.
It is possible to stuff a lot of work into a day. It is possible to move fast (and break things). It is possible to keep more balls than you can even count in the air and spin a plate on your nose simultaneously, which is what a well-oiled productivity system enables.
You have to stop and ask if it’s a good idea to try to do ALL THE THINGS. Oliver Burkeman writes eloquently about the simple reality that we will never have time to do all of the things we might want to do in life in Four Thousand Weeks. Don’t let your productivity system fool you into believing you can alter the laws of spacetime. Decide what’s most important and put your energy there. Throw out your bucket list and instead marvel at all the things you’ve already done. Who knows if you’ll get another year or even another day?
The virtuous cycle
I knew I needed to break out of a downward spiral. In 2019, I was frustrated with my job, drank more than I should, and gained a lot of weight after giving up exercise. Even in the fog of an ongoing hangover, I delivered my projects at work. Why couldn’t I apply the same persistence to my health?
I knew what I needed to do but could never get the momentum to keep healthy habits going. I was stuck on this downward spiral, digging in my claws to keep from sliding further down.
It was the combination of a global pandemic and a cancer diagnosis that allowed me to start spiraling upward. The lockdown gave me the time to fit in daily walks and workouts and prepare food at home rather than eating at restaurants half the time. The cancer gave me the motivation to change my diet and relationship with alcohol. My latent obsession with “productivity” gave me the tools to change my habits.
It started with tracking. To stay in ketosis as I went through cancer treatments, I tracked my food in Cronometer and checked my ketone and glucose levels a couple of times a day. I started a series of morning habits that I tracked in an app: meditation, yoga, and journaling. I went for a daily walk and started to note my step count and distance traveled. My husband had purchased a Peloton, and I found time for a few rides every week.
Being a visual, creative person, I invested in a journal and some colorful pens to make my daily tracking more of an art project. I created grids of rainbow dots to illustrate my transformation, one tiny habit at a time.
I lost the 50 pounds I had gained. I started to have more energy. I got a new, remote job so I would not have to disrupt my new routines with a commute.
This positive change formed around a simple decision to take care of my body as my most important project. Everything else came second. But I realized I wanted more from life than that. I wanted financial freedom, creative expression, community engagement, and an organized home. To start to move the needle on all these things, I had to dig back into my productivity tools and create a system that works for my vision of a good life, not necessarily for delivering what capitalism wants from me.
The rebirth and death of annual planning
Once upon a time, I made a plan for the year. Many times, to be honest. If I took all of my aspirations, projects, and potential vacations and put them on a calendar, I would do them on schedule. I didn’t.
After my year of cancer treatments and lockdown, I decided to go through an intense planning process and make goals for 2021. Now that I had some foundational habits in place, I felt ready to take on more creative projects, learn a new language, decorate my house, upskill at work…well, there were a lot of goals.
I could plan pretty accurately for the first couple of months, but there were too many variables to know that I would be able to kick off a new project in April or go on a road trip in August. The things I wrote into my annual plan were about 80% wishful thinking, so they were about 20% achieved.
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Plans are useless. But the process of planning keeps us moving in a direction. That’s why I’ve shifted to seasonal planning. I go through a process more frequently to assess my progress and make plans on a time scale that I can predict. A seasonal plan may still be useless but is at least more accurate.
I take at least a half day every three months to go through my seasonal planning process. This includes reflecting on accomplishments and challenges and identifying my top projects and habits to focus on for the next three months. Then, I set up my task managers and trackers to mark daily progress.
I share my process in the spring and fall through a free Equinox Planning workshop. I find that planning with others can greatly increase the likelihood of following through on our plans.
I’m always evolving my systems as my priorities change. There is no perfect productivity system, but the best one is the one that keeps you aligned with your values. This process of values alignment is way more powerful than any to-do list app or knowledge management system. It’s about who you are, not what you produce.
