How To Be Less Productive
As someone who has been struggling to readjust in this moment I thought it would be interesting to propose an alternative to all the ‘making the most of your time at home’ pressures.
‘Productivity’ is seeping into every second of our lives, especially in a time where physical separation between when we would usually be classically ‘productive’ (work) and ‘unproductive’ (home) has become blurred beyond recognition.
However, this has been an upward trend for decades, as our tools and lifestyles have become evermore aligned to making the unproductive productive — exacerbated by the tweaking of everyone’s fake real lives online, which has depressed as many people as it has inspired.
Having to always be working towards our ‘goals’, and feeling as though we can never step back and coast for a bit, is mentally and physically exhausting for people (myself included).
So why don’t we all instead just cut ourselves some slack and start being less productive! Below are some thoughts on what we could all change on a day to day basis to be a less productive (but hopefully happier) society.
Over-scheduling
We all complain about scheduled meetings with others wasting our time, so why do we schedule these same meetings with ourselves by blocking out every second of our day for some task. Being so tight with scheduling seems like it would make you so organised that productivity would surely follow. Instead, this kind of rigidity can just lead to more stress and less control over each thing you are trying to achieve as you rush through the day in an attempt to stick to your plan.
If something’s important (as opposed to urgent) and needs to be done, block out twice as much time as you think it will take to make sure you can do it correctly and in the right frame of mind.
In general though, we should all be listening more to how our mind and body are feeling throughout the day as opposed to forcing it into self-defined ticking time boxes.
Over-working
Believing you’re superhuman and have the brain of Shonda Rhimes, Bill Gates, and Barrack Obama combined, will only end in feelings of complete inadequacy — all these people need downtime too, and you alone can not achieve the same things that the hundreds/thousands of people who work for them deliver on their behalf. Unfortunately, our pseudo-God level fascination with self made success stories prevents us from appreciating that a person’s successes were only made possible with the support of many other people who don’t get remembered.
We would do well to consider this next time we take on anything, and that for most of us we are lucky we don’t have to do these things alone. Teams and partners are there to help, not hinder your omnipotent creative genius…
Over-defining/thinking
Overthinking/over-defining is one of the worst things humans have ever devised. I can’t imagine this was a thing back when we still used to be part of the food chain. The privilege of our modern age has led to us inventing creative and scientific masterpieces, but also mental barriers.
So unless it is something that actually requires a level of mental planning/calculation then just trust yourself and go with it — it’s most likely you would have just ended up at the same conclusion anyway.
No slack
You know those 50 different habits and skills you’ve been tracking in your journal or app — if you’re not careful it could become a groundhog day to do list.
Habit trackers are great in principle but they can create a competition against yourself, and one that you are almost certain to lose as our perceptions of what we can achieve are usually greater than reality. If something is to actually become a habit, then you will naturally gravitate to frequently doing it in the long run.
So cut yourself some slack and realise that tracking ourselves at every step can be harmful. Maybe set your targets a little lower so that it can be built up slowly instead of immediately sending you into despair when you realise mediating for an hour a day is actually a lot harder than you thought.
And remember those habits that you enjoy will stick, so the ones that you’ve been struggling with for a while should maybe just be forgotten.
The points above are aimed at helping us focus on what we actually enjoy doing (besides those work and life chores we all have to endure), instead of filling your time with meaningless achievements.
And to those of you who are now thinking this was actually a post on how to be more productive, you’re not wrong, but you’re missing the point.
All images courtesy of Unsplash
