The Productivity Obsession While Staying at Home
There is an alternative to making self-improvement imperative our life mission.
I’m beginning to perceive productivity as a scary word. People have been talking about it too often, especially now that we’re in isolation times. Major corporations are offering free services, universities are giving free online courses, and porn sites have unlocked their premium memberships so we wouldn’t get bored in isolation.
But, now that we’ve been in isolation for a while, the effect of “a whole new world” we’ve discovered is letting us go. Now, it’s being replaced by pressure. The pressure to keep getting better and acquire new skills so that we can be competitive in the labor market is following us everywhere. Even in а state of emergency.
What does this mean? That capitalism hasn’t changed a bit. On the contrary, it’s now louder than ever.
Global capitalism in times of crisis
Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” during the plague quarantine. I never knew this, but I heard it so many times these days from websites that wanted to motivate me to be productive.
It looks like everyone has advice on how to spend the tons of free time you suddenly got. Doing yoga, watching movies and TV shows, reading books, cooking, learning a new language, or attending countless online programming courses.
With the goal to fill our time with something useful or fun, many companies have intensified their digital activities. This isn’t a surprise, as streaming media consumption has increased by over 50%. Everyone’s giving out something for free to show solidarity and responsibility for society.
At first, moves like these seem very human. Companies giving you something to help you get through tough times. But, when you think about it deeper, it’s, in fact, the right face of global capitalism. Most of these brands have only opened up just part of their offerings, just to subtly offer you something you’ll pay for.
The Streaming Wars have turned upside-down. Now, streaming platforms are competing over who will offer the biggest amount of free content. They are the good guys. They are fighting against large, profit-oriented corporations. They don’t care about the money. They care about you. So, you don’t have the right to complain that they’ve accidentally become more powerful than ever.
And, who can blame them?
Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to get the most out of the crisis. The important thing to understand here is that the state of emergency hasn’t put the consumer game on hold. On the contrary, it’s stronger than ever.
Now, we’re spending our free time exactly like we used to. But, with one small, significant difference. This time, we can do it for free. However, we now have the time to pay attention to other ads they show us while watching. These ads lead us to additional services they have to offer, leaving a few more signups here and there.
You never lacked time, you lacked discipline
This is one of those quotes we’ve been hearing every day since quarantine started.
Indeed, maybe this isolation time has made us face the fact that we’ll probably never read that book we’ve been postponing for so long, under the excuse that we were too busy with our everyday activities.
This extra free time we got can be inspiring to become a better version of ourselves. However, at the same time, it can make us feel guilty because we aren’t enough. It makes us feel like everyone’s learning something new. Except us.
We are now spending a lot of our time binge-watching TV shows, wanting to forget about the dreadful situation we’re in, at least for a while. But, the truth is, we’d probably rather spend that time doing something useful, like learning a new language.
This feeling of pressure is haunting us, as now all the online courses have become free. Even universities are offering some of their best and most expensive courses — for free. Now, the accent isn’t on the profit. But profit is still present, although maybe hidden.
This has made us voluntarily accept the norm that we constantly need to improve.
Our best version is the only version of ourselves that we like.
Even when no one’s looking.
All this comes at a time when we should take care of our own health. This is a time we should spend with our loved ones, trying to hold on to the measures our governments set. And while doing this, we mustn’t forget to, somehow, keep our social lives active.
We can’t achieve this while we constantly listen to people who criticize us that we’re lazy if we don’t work to improve ourselves. When did new skills become the solution to the potentially biggest economic crisis the world has ever seen? Is getting more competitive in the labor market going to help us save civilization as we know it?
Having all this in our heads, suddenly, all the free time we thought was endless, is becoming shorter and shorter. It looks like the increase in the number of choices that were supposed to improve our lives is taking a wrong turn. It’s only adding more inconvenience and guilt to our lives.
When Wellbeing Becomes Goods
We’re actually facing some kind of a paradox here. On one side, you have many countries where you can only buy the necessary products you need to survive, like oil, bread, and flour. On the other side, you have a masterclass course that used to cost $1,500, but now you can purchase it for $25. The power of choice is now moving from the offline space to the digital channels.
This crisis is showing that our lives really are ruled by the market. Thanks to capitalism, we’re now not required to get out of our bed to become a better version of ourselves. This is a real moment to examine whether what we’re usually buying is, in fact, essential. This applies to both material and non-material purchases.
Now, society has imposed a new mission for us — to reinvent ourselves. Buying isn’t all about material stuff anymore. It’s about non-material things that we perceive as investing in ourselves. So, it’s not only large corporations or streaming platforms that are pressured to increase their revenues in times of crisis. We, as individuals, are too.
Suddenly, aside from the time we spend at our jobs, we’re expected to acquire new skills, improve, and become a subject of additional education for new professions. Capitalism is imposing us the fear of losing our competitiveness with a one-time discount, giving us all these expensive online courses at silly prices. This is making us feel anxious because we’re afraid of missing the chance to become a better version of ourselves at lower prices.
The only thing we need to do to give power to this imperative is to start racing, but at the same time, never admit loudly that we can’t really achieve everything we’re expected to. This race includes everyone who’s working on themselves, regardless of whether it’s their career or looks, just because they don’t want to be excluded from the labor, or even the love relationship market.
Guided by this, we think of our own wellbeing as goods that needs to be exchanged. We take care of ourselves because we don’t want to be kicked out of the race. We want to receive an acknowledgment from others. Not because we truly want to be healthy and feel good.
In times of the COVID-19 crisis, health problems have become a sin. You feel something’s not right with your body and you feel guilty for not being able to prevent it.
The entire fight of becoming a better version of ourselves is making us numb to perceive the bigger picture and focusing on values that really matter.
The alternative
There is an alternative to making self-improvement imperative our life mission. Spending more time with our loved ones can help us eliminate the feeling of guilt because of our lack of improvement. Even if it’s just online, spending time with our family and friends should be imperative we should always strive for. These are the crucial activities that can really improve our health and inner peace.
It’s totally okay to put your usual activities on hold and instead, do something that really makes you happy. Your hobbies don’t have to be something that will improve your financial status. They don’t have to improve the way you look, just to get more appreciation from others.
You don’t always have to work on achieving goals. Instead, you can do something just for yourself and just for today, something that won’t necessarily result in a more successful future. Being bored is okay. Being bored can encourage other levels of creativity we never knew existed. And, we haven’t encountered them because we never allow ourselves to be bored.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should stop working on yourself. I’m the first one who’s never going to stop doing that.
But, this situation is really extraordinary. We all have our own different mechanisms of coping with it. That’s why we should all decide what success means separately.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use all these free possibilities you have access to. It only means you should decide what you want your productivity to be. If you want it to be reading books or doing online courses, that’s fine. But, if you want it to be spending more time with your brother who you never get to see normally, that’s also fine.
You’re not missing out on anything.
