Productivity Porn Is Sabotaging You. Here’s How To Break Free.
Productivity porn keeps you unhappy with your work and takes the joy out of your leisure time.
What do open-plan offices and low-rise jeans have in common?
Once upon a time, people thought they were a great idea. Then some time passed, and we collectively realised that in the vast majority of situations, they’re actually pretty terrible.
True, productivity hacks can be helpful. But they can lead to a confusing, harmful view of what it means to be productive that undermines its goal of helping us feel satisfied with our work.
We continue to beat the dead horse of productivity hacks for one simple reason: it gives us back a much-needed sense of control over our time. However, the discourse around productivity as a state to be achieved is counterproductive. It fills us with guilt and robs us of the satisfaction of our accomplishments.
In this article, you’ll find out why productivity porn keeps you in a negative cycle and how to break free of it to regain a sense of fulfilment in your achievements.
Productivity should be the means, not the goal
As Nicholas A. Ferrell explains in his insightful essay “An Essay on Productivity, Production, and Productive Leisure,” we’ve turned productivity itself into a goal.
When we focus on the systems more than we do on the actual actions that lead to producing something, then all the efforts we make to “be productive” are just procrastination.
Think about it. Have you ever spent way too much time shoehorning a project management app into your workflow? Carrying around planners you don’t actually use? Creating templates you have to keep updating, anyway?
And so, productivity hacks become the perfect busywork. They make you feel you’re doing something important, but in reality, they’re taking away time you could use on finishing tasks. It’s not surprising many people try to compensate for spending time on systems by working more hours or using weekends to catch up.
Respect your free time
If productivity was meant to give us more time to enjoy hobbies and time with family, why are we modelling our free time the same way we design our work life?
For many, free time feels like a failure in a system otherwise optimised for peak productivity, in which every minute counts to get something done.
So, even activities you’d otherwise find enjoyable become part of that system. Reading or watching TV are no longer pleasurable, but activities that also need to be optimised by listening to audiobooks or watching shows at 2x speed. Breaks become a waste of time unless they’re done the right way to energize you for your next work sprint. Making friends becomes networking. Hobbies become income streams.
While taking appropriate breaks helps with improving your productivity, the enjoyment you get from your time off shouldn’t be conditional on the monetary or performance benefits you get from it.
Schedule breaks
The push and pull between a natural desire for rest and enjoyment and external and internal pressures to embody one version of success keep us coming back to productivity hacks, even though many of them don’t work.
Picture this. You’ve made your schedule for the week, but something unexpected derails all your plans. So, you start blocking out distractions and working longer hours that eliminate your leisure time. Instead of taking the time to enjoy a quiet meal, you eat on your desk while working. Instead of spending an hour or two watching TV at night, you work late with a Netflix show playing in the background.
The importance of proper breaks can’t be understated. Funt proposes four types of breaks:
- Social breaks, like hanging out with friends or calling a loved one.
- Nutritional break, like meals or snack breaks.
- Relaxation breaks like daydreaming or gentle movement.
- Cognition breaks, like reading or scrolling through social media.
However, the only types of breaks that boost productivity are relaxation and social. Coincidentally, there are the ones that suffer the most when we try to optimise our lives. Empty periods where we could spend talking to friends, daydreaming, meditating or doing gentle physical activity are either optimised (like listening to an audiobook while walking) or eliminated altogether.
No wonder why productivity tips hardly ever make us feel like we have more time to relax and enjoy.
How you can stop optimising and love your work
So now we know why productivity hacks are mostly ineffective. But what can we do about it? Luckily, there are plenty of steps you can take to break free of the cycle of obsessive productivity to slow down, get the breaks you deserve, and evaluate your work differently to feel happier and more accomplished with your progress and your unique rhythm.
Get comfortable doing nothing
The best thing you can do to slip from the grip of productivity porn is to reintroduce the habit of doing nothing. No, I don’t mean quit your job. I mean, get comfortable with those small pockets of time when you have nothing planned.
For instance, while you’re waiting for a train or queuing at the supermarket, spend a moment in silence and stillness instead of reaching out to your phone to read an article or reply to emails.
In his book “Peace Is Every Step,” Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh shares several easy ways to find calm and stillness in everyday life, without needing to block out long chunks of time for meditation. For instance, mundane events like red lights and ringtones can serve as bells of mindfulness, or reminders to focus on your breath.
Turn guilt into gratitude
Adopt a mindset of gratitude to recognise and celebrate each step, no matter how big or small. Then you can feel more satisfied with the work you’ve done instead of worrying about “productive states” or the time it took you to complete the task.
For instance, if you only completed two of the five goals you set yourself for the week, focus your attention on the work you did complete, and celebrate those victories. Let it be a reminder to practice self-compassion.
Underestimating the time it’ll take you to do a task, forgetting to do something, or just taking a break for a couple of days is not a reflection of your work ethic or future success.
Take productivity tips with a grain of salt
Productivity hacks are bandaids. Bandaids help keep superficial wounds clean and out of reach. But they won’t heal a deep gash that needs stitches.
Likewise, productivity tricks provide quick ways to streamline some processes, reduce decision-making, and make some tasks faster, but they won’t fix underlying causes like fatigue, anxiety, or workplace issues.
I’ve written about the causes of procrastination and why you need to take care of your emotional health if you want to get more done. To Edit — Stop treating productivity as a time management problem
Learn about knowledge management
How many articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, books, and ads do you consume every day? How do you make sense of all of it?
Information overload may be a contributing factor in the boom of productivity porn we’ve seen in the last few years. After all, most of the modern productivity content is created for knowledge workers.
In that chaos of content overload, we may feel compelled to make sense of it by making our consumption and production processes more efficient. But instead of controlling our productivity, we should set up systems to record and retrieve that information more easily. That way, we feel compelled to consume less and more mindfully.
So, instead of using quick fixes, look into the way you consume content. Are you being intentional? Are you taking notes of the content you consume? Are those notes easily retrievable? Luckily, the field of personal knowledge management has gained traction in the last few years, and there are plenty of resources to get you started.
Keep a daily journal
Journaling keeps your daily achievements in perspective. At the end of the day, spend 10 minutes looking back at the tasks you completed. Don’t think about what you didn’t finish. Instead, write down what you achieved and what went well that day. No task or achievement is small enough.
Over time, you’ll measure progress not on time spent, but on each step you’ve taken to get closer to your goal. The more satisfaction you find in every small achievement in your journey, the less you’ll feel like relying on productivity porn to optimise every aspect of your life.
Keep your values in mind
What if, instead of using productivity hacks to squeeze in more tasks in your schedule, you started doing less instead? You may be falling short on your productivity goals not out of laziness or lack of organization skills, but because you’re overwhelmed with unnecessary tasks.
To gain a sense of direction and prioritise your work, use your values
By not prioritising based on your values, you might be wasting time on work that doesn’t align with your values or gets you closer to your goals.
You may be acting contrary to your values, and that’s why your achievements don’t feel fulfilling. Consequently, you feel the need to do more work to find that satisfaction.
Takeaway
Productivity porn keeps you unhappy with your work, takes away the joy out of leisure, and robs you of the precious few moments of silence.
By spending moments of silence without doing something productive, accepting your limitations, adopting gratitude, consuming content mindfully, and acting according to your values, you can break the cycle of productivity porn and start feeling satisfaction about a day’s work, no matter how small or imperfect.
