How Strangers Around The World Are Helping Me Be Remarkably More Productive Every Day.

Here’s how it works. (If you work remotely, it’s a lifesaver.)

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

I had a dream a few months back that I joined a ruthless and competitive productivity “cult.”

Think Squid Game, but without the blood.

It worked something like this:

• At sunrise, members/competitors gathered in a courtroom-style meeting room and publically declared their goals to achieve that day. Goals had to be “ambitious” — lest you be publically jeered at by your peers.
• Off we’d go to work, racing against the clock to achieve what we’d committed to.
• At sunset, we’d gather back in the room for the evening meeting — a cross between a performance review and a public trial. Failure to meet your targets resulted in public shaming and ex-communication from the group (and for some particular reason I can’t really remember, that was a terrifying prospect.)

I’m sure Carl Jung would’ve had something to say about my dream. But, I didn’t feel I needed psychoanalysis— the deeper unconscious meaning wasn't hard to uncover.

For some time leading up to that dream, I’d had a mounting feeling that I had too much to do, and not enough…