Hard work is not enough
There are many people in this world who appreciate the value of a hard day’s work, but few can accept the messy human truths about what it takes to be truly productive. So they end up busy instead, and call that “productive work.”
Staying busy and completing many tasks feels productive. Those who have a strong work ethic take pride in “getting stuff done,” and of course, there is merit there. But it only part of the picture.
True productivity is not based on work ethic. Productivity has the word product in it, and a real product is produced, delivered, and put into use.
To be worth anything at all, a product needs to reach the people who can benefit from it, who will in turn provide you with what you need to keep going. This is the only way to kickstart the feedback loops that sustain the costly and painful efforts that any worthwhile work involves.
When it comes to your most beloved work: you cannot just sell and fantasize about the dream while “keeping busy” in your day-to-day efforts — you must also learn to get things out into the world.
Many can feel productive by working on thousands of tasks and just checking the boxes and clearing their plate, but that is a dead-end path. It is the mindset of a busy person, and nothing is more damaging to creativity than a busy mind. Creativity requires room to breath, and a task-oriented mindset suffocates creative people.
True productivity can be very messy. It can mean starting many things that you do not even intend to finish and then letting most of them fail. The purpose of doing so is to find the One Thing that is worth focusing your full energy on until it is shipped. And then you rinse, and repeat.
True productivity comes from giving your full attention to that One Thing — at the exclusion of all else — to drag it out of your head and into the world. You do this not for its own sake, but because you believe and you know that is exactly what you need to be doing in that particular moment of your life.
And when you choose to focus with the light of a laser rather than a lantern, you do it because you know the value of doing so (even after considering what you might be giving up) is so much greater than the net-net outcome of spreading your attention all around in so many directions at once.
We live in an attention-scarce society. Being able to put something at the front of your mind and hold it there, even for a little while, is a true asset and a secret power.
But putting these ideas into action is tricky. In order to be productive, you must be able to make tough choices. This means saying “I will do THIS and not THAT,” and saying “I will do THIS now, and THAT later.”
Prioritization is uncomfortable and often poorly managed because it involves tough choices. We want to be everything that everyone needs us to be at all times, but that leaves us stretched so thin that we end up leaving nothing left inside ourselves AND we let down those who depend on us most.
The way to make these tough choices is not to make a big checklist and then order it from most to least important. Everything’s important if it’s even worth thinking about, and it strains our integrity to try to pick and choose based on what matters more or less in relative terms.
Instead, pay attention to two things:
1. The things that you are drawn to which allow you to use your skills and life experiences in the most effective possible way.
2. The things that you know will have a clear and positive impact on real people who you care about.
These are the true indicators of genuinely productive work.
Productive work is not being busy.
Productive work is not putting in long hours.
Productive work is not other people noticing how hard you work.
Productive work is what you deliver into the hands of real people that you serve — which has been built with the greatest degree of care, energy, attention, skill, and compassion.
This is what it means to be productive. In order to figure out how to work in this way, it can take many years of dedicated effort.
If you don’t know how to put in a hard day’s work, then you can ignore this whole message. Find a way to develop that discipline, because it is necessary.
But then after that, go from being task-oriented to being process-oriented. This way, you will develop the idea that it’s not just about the tasks, but the way you do things and your ability to optimize how you get things done.
But once you build a strong process-oriented mindset, the next step is… to throw it all away. To stop optimizing the “getting stuff done” aspect of things and instead focus on why you are doing what you are doing.
In the end, the only socially responsible way to work is to become outcome-oriented. This means delivering. This means shipping!
And of course, this is also the scary part. The emotional part. The risky part.
It is also the only part that really matters.
I have had too many friends suffer in the darkness because of their fear of shipping their work. Too many friends who work with great intensity and brilliant minds but for whatever reason, get stuck on the part where you take that inner fire you kindled and spread it out into the world. It’s the biggest tragedy in creative work, and it breaks my heart every time I see it. That’s why I wrote this essay.
(and if you want to recap the main points in the form of “Bearded Man bangs on shaky table” here it is in video form:)
If you think this message might help someone you know, please share it. Click the heart or whatever, I barely ever use Medium but I hear that’s how you get a billion random strangers to come highlight things.
