Productivity in a Social World
How “social” has changed what it means to be productive
When we play games, hours can just fly by. In games, the actions we take have direct consequences: progress, rewards, punishments, etc. The explicit results we get from games has spoiled us to the point where we are now taking this satisfaction for granted. As we often hear, the real world doesn’t quite work like this. Yet here we are.
How can we stay engaged with such simple games but lose focus so quickly for other things? Especially when they are the activities that contribute, or should contribute, to our physical, emotional, and material happiness? These activities must be worth our time and creating discipline for.
In the 21st century, our happiness is becoming derived by the virality of our small actions. How can my activities in this moment be compounded on the social graph? Take a picture, upload to Instagram, and wait anxiously for likes. Write a comment, submit to Reddit, and wait anxiously for karma. Take an action, submit to the social graph, and sit tight for validation. Sound familiar? This is the crux of what it means to be a consumer and be validated as such. For productivity, it’s more than just putting what you need to do on the social graph. Studies have shown that you should keep goals to yourself or else you’ll get the satisfaction at a biochemical level within. So clearly, this is more than taking what works in games and social and blindly applying it to more productive aspirations.
Herein lies the problem with the consumer versus professional mindset. What are our expectations and what is considered success. As we move to remote work and ubiquitous mobile usage, our attention is a valued resource rather than just a commodity. Those consumer urges are distractions that take us away from work and activities that demand a greater sense of understanding and commitment.
These feelings feed off our primal urges nestled in our limbic system. We seek attention, security, and power; sometimes, this comes at the expense of eating properly, exercising, and other actions that contribute directly to our long term wellness.
With the democratization of pretty much everything, any single individual has the power to create a following, mob, or any other relevant form of critical mass.
This is an issue now more than ever since major issues are not being or going to be addressed. These basic urges are prioritized over everything else. Our demographic, the technophiles and Millenials, crave this and seek these types of feelings in their jobs, significant others, and other responsibilities and relationships. It’s only natural that we are seeing things like high turnover, divorce rates, cohabitation, and overall promiscuity.
The key here is not to fight what the situation is. Technology has evolved and it has affected culture along the way. What’s more important is to figure out how we can harness these learnings to create the actions we see fit for long-term good for the individual, community, and society. Companies and products have an obligation to tackle these issues. Unfortunately, we are in a tragedy of the commons where no one entity is willing to take a lead in this. With Catalist, we hope to use these insights to allow our generation to work for themselves and be engaged in their own dreams.
