Getting to the roots of productivity
People used to ask me what I wanted to be, and as a child it always changed: doctor, writer, artist. But the past few years it has always been the same: “I want to be a morning person.”
I want to be a morning person because it feels virtuous. In those hours before the day begins, I can carve out me-time, deep-thought-time, personal-project-time, meditation-time, exercise-time, all the time that seems to get lost during the day. Right?
Over the years, I’ve made a lot of plans:
I tracked my mornings for a week in October, and I succeeded in getting out of bed before 7am exactly zero times.
My 23andme results report that based on my genetics and age, I should naturally wake up at 8:51am — nearly 3 hours later than I intend. Am I predestined to be a lazy bum forever?
Will waking up early solve all of my productivity problems?
All my life I’ve believed that early risers are happier and more productive. But are so-called “successful” people getting up early?
The Geekwire series Working Geek features the daily routines of tech leaders in the Pacific Northwest. As I work in tech and live in Seattle, this was the perfect cohort against whom to compare myself.
I was surprised to see that nearly as many Working Geeks are night owls as early birds — 62 compared to 73. Both groups report having to change their routines to align with work, life, or kids.
Night owls, however, were much more likely to say that they force themselves to get up early than early birds were to say they had to stay up late. At least two Working Geeks referred to themselves as “recovering night owls,” as if staying up late was an addiction, like alcoholism.
Do morning people have a productivity advantage simply because we let them live with less disruption? Because night owls have to adapt their natural sleep cycles, they tend to have higher incidences of depression, insomnia, and other health risks — all things that compromise your productivity, and every other aspect of your life too.
Maybe all of this means I should just let myself sleep in until 8:51 every morning.
But if I do that, how will I fit in my aspirational yoga practice, herbal tea regimes, 10-step Korean skin care, Goodreads reading challenge, and all the other accoutrements of a productive, urbane professional?
What does productivity mean anyway?
Getting to the roots of my anxiety — it has never really been about when I wake up. It’s about what I aim to do when I wake up, that laundry list of items I wrote out in my notebooks. How do I fit it all in?
We’re all obsessed with productivity.
Querying on “how to be more productive” yields 249 million results on Google and 9,000 books on Goodreads. Daily routine articles with profiles of busy executives abound in Business Insider, Vogue, and even Architectural Digest — productive professionals earning glamorous salaries, who jet off to Singapore for a midday meeting, return to 2.3 kids, and make their own nut-milk.
The productivity superstars in the 14 articles I tallied report working twice as many hours as the average full-time employed American. Working mothers had the highest differential — the working moms in these profiles work 5.7 hours more per day than the average working mom.
The message is clear: If you want to be productive, you need to fill every waking hour with productivity. Especially for women and especially for moms.
The unrealistic expectations get even worse when you consider that the “unpaid labor” disparity between men and women is still significant. The most recent ATUS data showed that women spent 74 more minutes per day than men on activities like childcare and housework.
Of the articles I surveyed, 44% of the women profiled mentioned children and childcare. Not a single man profiled mentioned having or not having children. Perhaps they didn’t have any, but it was impossible to tell.
From prescribed productivity to creative diversity
If my own journey is any example, our obsession with the right lifestyle, the right morning routine, and productivity is a pyramid scheme. The rhetoric sells confidence, but nets out distress and sleep deprivation.
It’s helpful to remember that I don’t have to work this way in order to succeed. In fact, great creative minds often make their own routines that don’t resemble anyone else’s.
The great French novelist, George Sand wrote in the middle of the night, while her ailing mother was asleep. She binge-ate chocolate while she worked.
One of my favorite illustrators, Maira Kalman, wakes up early, not to paint, but to read obituaries (perspective!) and take walks. She keeps a green chaise in her studio for naps.
Poet Gertrude Stein woke up at 10am, and took regular breaks to look at cows and rocks. If a cow didn’t fit with her mood, she went to find another cow. Stein never wrote more than half an hour a day, but did it every day — “it makes a lot of writing year by year.”
Working well in the 21st century
In today’s world, many of us can set our own hours. I’m lucky to work at a place where my team trusts me to get work done without tracking my hours.
In the grand scheme of things, our lives are so fleeting — why waste our precious living hours by being groggy from sleep? We can all aim to be more forgiving of our own lives and the routines we live by.
On that note, I’m going to find a cow to help boost my creativity for the rest of the day. I hear the Seattle Aquarium has a friendly otter.
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