Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
It’s addictive, we have been conditioned to crave the high of being productive. It used to be cool to be productive, a high achiever, multitasker extraordinaire but now the cool kids are burning out and we’re all waking up to the fact that this productivity only makes us busier.
I’ve only just worked all this out in the past couple of years but I always had an inkling that something wasn’t quite right. I’d popped my head up to question it now and again, which was usually met with surprise and/or displeasure which made me think, am I onto something here? I remember in my second job at a large media agency I worked consistency long hours as did my entire team, which was not uncommon. I would walk into the office before 8am and would be walking back in my front door after 9pm every day. After a year or so of this I stopped to ask myself why, why did everyone think this was OK, why did I keep going along with it? As a young naïve 25 year old I didn’t realise this is the way they wanted it, maximum productivity. But I went marching into HR with my spreadsheet calculating the hours of overtime I had clocked up over the course of the year and roughly how much that equated to in monetary value. You can imagine the their reaction! Looking back it makes me both cringe with the audacity and incredibly proud at the boldness of 25 year old me.
You see the trick was to keep us that way, in a consistent cycle of work so we didn’t have the time to question anything and certainly didn’t have the time to look for another job. To keep us in the capitalist system of earn and buy, earn and buy. Maximum productivity and self medicating with consumer goods. The expensive handbag to make the longer hours seem worth it. Holidays to recover from the over work, reconnect with friends and family that we haven’t seen because we’ve been in the office from dusk till dawn. Here’s the thing I realised, you don’t work your way out of it. Simply the more you do, the more you do.
This is something we have all experienced when you become an expert ‘doer’ as I call it, meaning you just get shit done. The problem with being ‘a doer’ is that the more you do the more the list grows. You become known as the person who does all the things, the easy option. In Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals, he talks about the fact that the future was never supposed to be like this.
‘In 1930, in a speech titled ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ the economist John Maynard Keyes made a famous prediction; within a century, thanks to the growth in wealth and the advancement of technology no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.’
Since I read this I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this dream for a better future which we should all be living right now. Where the question of how to fill the vast amounts of leisure time stretching before us is our biggest challenge. Looking at this against the backdrop of reality and the hyper productivity technology has brought to our lives I can’t help but wonder what John Maynard Keyes would have made of how we are using technology.
Technology has only made one winner here, as the working day stretched longer thanks to the mobile devices; taking more of our leisure time away from us instead of giving us more. It has created guilt at taking a lunch break, leaving work on time to pursue hobbies, taking a holiday without checking emails, and most alarmingly going to the loo. We have been led to believe that our identities are tied up in our working life, that this defines who we are, linking our self worth to productivity. This type of toxic productivity is the outsized desire for productivity at all times to the expense of other priorities. It makes us think as if we are not doing enough or working hard enough and it gives us unrealistic expectations of ourselves.
The burning question is what can we do about it? This has to be a group effort, a movement created at a mass level within organisations, within society but there are things as an individual you can do to start separating productivity from your own sense of self worth and inspire others to do the same along the way:
Set boundaries – with yourself as well as other people
Set a schedule – this week I’m trialing a mapping and scheduling technique. Separating what I want to get done into buckets and including one for self care too. This is less about achieving maximum productivity and more about being realistic about how much I can get done in a week so I don’t end up beating myself up at the end of the week
Set realistic goals that are achievable, attainable and flexible can help differentiate from work that must be done or can be completed later
Learn what real rest is - working from home I had fallen into the habit of thinking running to put on a load of washing was taking a break, it’s not
Ultimately give yourself a break. You were not put on this earth to work, to be productive, to consume or even procreate. You are enough just as you are.
I’m reading an article about Resisting the Pressure to Overwork in the Harvard Business Review.
I’m listening to the audiobook of This One Wild and Precious Life by Sarah Wilson a climate activist and author. She talks about how we have become so disconnected from our lives and how we can find our way back to this one wild and precious life.