Productivity as a Fetish
Looking around at the productivity gurus writing about their ideal morning routine, or showing off their amazing productivity system, it’s easy to think that we’ve got it wrong. Our system doesn’t let us live the life we see captured in moments and posted on Instagram. The task manager we use doesn’t let us flow effortlessly between tasks checking off everything we should get done in a day. We don’t have the time to get to everything and boy that list of interesting books and articles is piling up.
Modern productivity culture is obsessed with control and fetishizes the ideal day. Behind that curtain is almost always more chaos than you think. Many of the people touting their system actually have a team behind them getting most of the work done. Their only job is to show you the productivity system, not sit in the morass of expectations that most of us have around us from work and family and our own desires for life.
Today we’ll take a look at the things we think should let us win the productive game and how they fail us.
Systems
One of the first things we fetishize is the productivity system that we use. Do we use GTD or Agile or maybe the Eisenhower Matrix or how about Kanban, but don’t forget about Bullet Journal. But those systems only deal with your tasks and most tasks, certainly all projects, have copious reference material that goes alongside them, how do you organize those reference bits? Do you use PARA or Zettelkasten how about LATCH but don’t forget about Cornell Notes.
Honestly, I’ve barely scratched the surface of my brain to find all these examples of systems. I’m sure there are more of them out there and that they work for some people who will swear that the system that works for them is the best system.
Systems themselves aren’t the problem. I like PARA for organizing projects so I have a folder of all my current projects and an archive folder for stuff I’m not involved in anymore. That’s as far as I take PARA though.
GTD is good for helping you find the next immediate action on a project and Kanban works if you’re trying to limit the WIP (work in progress) so that you don’t get overwhelmed by far too many tasks.
Bullet Journal is excellent for enforcing constraints, because if a task feels like too much work to move from one page to another you’re telling yourself that it’s not that valuable. Then you stop moving it and your list gets shorter because you stopped worrying about tasks that don’t matter.
The problem with systems is that we go hunting them, and never stop hunting. The second most popular content on my site is when I evaluate a new system for productivity. Someone uses GTD, but then has a boat load of tasks sitting on top of them so they look at Agile or Kanban. Either of these systems works in the short term, but then they’re overloaded again and they start looking for another system.
Pretty much any of the systems will work, if you can stay focused on using the system. Life is going to get in the way sometimes though and you’ll need to stop after life gives you a break and clean up whatever system you’re using so that it’s back to its ideal organized state. Switching systems won’t fix this, some hard work will.
Just do the hard work and stop spending those hours hunting for the next magical system.
Tools
The most popular content on my site is a review of a new task manager. Without doing any research I know I’ve reviewed.
I’m sure there are more that I’m missing but the truth is that the tool you use mostly doesn’t matter. The reason that people switch tools is the same reason they search for a new system.
Their tasks are overwhelming them and they don’t feel like they’ll get everything done. But as Oliver Burkeman advises in Meditations for Mortals there is freedom in realizing that you won’t get everything done, that most of your tasks don’t matter and you should let them go because you’re never going to do them. They’re not valuable enough to bother with.
The problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right tool to control your tasks, it’s that you think it’s possible to control every task that flows your way1.
The reason a new tool, or a new system for that matter, feels so good is that you give up on so many of the tasks that were weighing you down in the old system. You don’t move every idea over figuring that you’ll come back to them at some point, and then you never come back.
So don’t switch tools when it looks overwhelming. Quit all the tasks that were due 3 weeks ago and you’ve never done. If they were important you would have done them when you said you would. Let them go and if they become important, they’ll resurface.
Freedom of Time
If only I had time to take 20 mile walks to think like Charles Dickens I could be a good writer. I just need the time to think that a long walk without interruptions would give me. Heck, I have three kids in sports, forget a long walk how about 15 minutes of time where no one asks me to do some random shit they think is important.
Could I get that time, without getting up at 5 am please?
For every Charles Dickens who had plenty of free time you have a Jane Austen who wrote in the sitting room and hid her writing when interrupted by family members. Ursula K. Le Guin raised 3 children and spoke of “stealing” writing time between stuff her kids required of her.
Here I love How to Write a Lot, specifically his advice early in the book that if you’re not going to make a schedule for writing then you should slowly close his book make sure it looks clean and give it to a friend that really does want to write2. Silva also says that the specific equipment you use won’t help you write a lot, only a schedule you stick to is going to help you write3.
Far from being a bad thing, constraints help you focus on what matters. You don’t have time to meander around into 7 things that don’t matter during your writing time, you must write. I write most of these between 5:30 am and 7:30 am on Friday mornings. Yes I often have an outline that came to me earlier in the week, or a few links that I found interesting, but the bulk of what you read is done in those two hours. I then take the kids to school and walk the dog before doing an editing pass and then getting the content ready on my site.
By 9:30 am I’m working my day job because I have to work to keep food on the table. While I have books for sale and a membership that earn some money, they are far from paying the bills. My bills are paid by a 20 year long career as a programmer.
Numbers
Finally, we often fetishize numbers as if the number of books you read in a year has any bearing on your quality as a person or how intelligent and thoughtful you are. Accumulate articles to read later, videos to watch later, and all manner of things that our brain thinks a good smart person like us should be engaged with4.
On the task front many systems gamify the act of doing tasks. Todoist gives you karma points for doing more tasks. But Todoist doesn’t know what tasks are important and thus deserve a point, or 300 points. As far as Todoist is concerned you can check off a task for changing the furnace filter and get as many points as getting that proposal out which keeps the house over your head.
There is so much that passes us by that has some value to read that we’ll never get to it all. Stop worrying about it and let it all pass you by like a river. Dip in and grab some stuff that you can read in the moment and let the rest of it pass you by without worry5.
It’s unlikely that I’m going to change the oil on my wife’s car, rotate the tires, change the furnace filter, read for a few hours, help with Thanksgiving dinner, and get some good bike rides in this weekend even with an extra Monday off. Instead I need to pick the few tasks that must get done, the oil change and tires, and the rest can wait a week so that I can be around the house, get some bike ride time in, and finish a long weekend feeling like I had some much needed rest.
The number of tasks I get done won’t impress my family. They won’t think I’m a better father or husband if I can show them that I did 50 things this weekend but didn’t spend any time with them. Yet so many of us look at the number of tasks we do as the best metric for our value.
Once you have a system that works, stop worrying about systems and use what you’ve got while remembering you will never be able to get everything done so you need to let some tasks go. Do you have a task management system that works for you, forget the new shiny tool and keep using the tool you’ve got in front of you. The new shiny tool will only help in the short term, the problem is likely that you don’t let enough stuff drop off your list without worrying about them.
Don’t expect that “if only” your life were different you’d get more done, or have time to focus on those things you wish were important enough to get focused on now. Set a schedule for the things that are important and do them. If life gets in the way today, pick the schedule back up tomorrow.
Stop focusing on numbers because numbers can easily lie. Do what you can every day, and let the rest pass you by. Cut the tasks that haven’t been done in weeks and stop worrying about them. The TBR piles should be put aside, read what you can and don’t worry about the rest. If it’s important enough it will come back. If it doesn’t come back, it wasn’t important.
Meditations for Mortals Pg 7 ↩︎How to Write a Lot Loc 163 ↩︎How to Write a Lot Loc 240 ↩︎Meditations for Mortals Pg 27 ↩︎Meditations for Mortals Pg 27 ↩︎#GTD #hustleCulture #kanban #Obsidian #productivityPorn
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