The Biggest Issue with Long-Term Productivity
If you’ve been following productivity advice for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced the following cycle:
- You find a new tool, system or motivational slogan.
- You get excited, work hard and get far more done than usual, seemingly proving that the new thing works.
- A few weeks pass, the new thing becomes old and you lose enthusiasm.
- Eventually, you revert to your old habits.
I suspect a major cause of the difficulty is that we readily conflate two different ideas of what it means to “be productive.”
The first is a subjective feeling of productivity. This comes when we’re super busy or exerting extra willpower to focus on our work. This feeling is easy to tap into when you’re motivated by a deadline or a new productivity device.
The second is the objective output of productivity. This is the actual amount of important work that gets done. Books read, code written, clients served or products shipped.
In the short term, the subjective and objective views of productivity often coincide. It usually is the case that when we’re subjectively productive, more work is actually getting done.
