All opinions are mine and mine alone.
Productivity is a hot topic these days. Generally speaking, it’s something we all want to maximize and improve in our lives to the maximum extent, in order to drive professional success, personal organisation, and more.
It is certainly a good idea to be proactive and outgoing, to get things done and maintain a strong sense of personal agency. However, there are good reasons to question whether it is best to try to make every moment productive. In fact, trying to optimise productivity in all areas of your life, at all times, is likely to be a recipe for disaster. Sometimes, finding a basic instruction guide to simplify how you do things, and taking the time to just relax and let your hair down, can be very rewarding and important.
Here are some reasons why it’s not all about maximising productivity.
To maintain balance and perspective, we all need to have moments of “stillness” or pure leisure
People like to feel balanced, centred and to have a sense of perspective in life that goes beyond being pragmatically effective in the moment. These traits do not necessarily relate to “doing” something. They are more about fitting in regular moments of “stillness” so that you can reconnect with the moment, relax, have fun, and place your thoughts and experiences in context, within the broader picture of your life. The Norwegian explorer and Antarctic record-setter, Erling Kagge, certainly seems to believe this – and has written an entire book entitled “Silence in the Age of Noise,” specifically highlighting the importance of not always being “on the go,” or distracted.
Many of the most important things in life cannot be measured and treated in a metric-driven way. Trying to do so could actually prove to be totally counter-productive
It is possible to become obsessed with making every moment productive, to the extent that you lose touch and miss the point altogether — or even end up acting counterproductively. Simply put, many of the most important things in life cannot be treated in a “metric driven” manner without missing the point or potentially doing harm.
The precious moments you spend with your significant other, for example, can only be experienced and enjoyed by being present and engaged in that moment, and focusing on the interpersonal relationship between you and that other person. You will not be able to emphasize the importance of “productivity” when you do this, for example, by trying to assess what you have done with your time together.
For some things, productivity is totally the wrong lens to look through.
Because we can often get the most out of things when we engage with them in a spirit that is playful
It doesn’t matter how ambitious you are about your goals, sometimes productivity still isn’t the right thing to emphasise in different contexts. It is important to remember, for example, that many of the greatest and most significant breakthroughs in history have been made because people – scientists, artists, or inventors – were simply exploring a topic they loved, with a sense of play. In recent times, in fact, many influential scientists have decried the fact that the increasing emphasis on “productivity” in University science departments has meant that there just isn’t enough time for the kind of free and open exploration that gave rise to the great breakthroughs of the past.
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