The Surprising Reason You Love Reading About Productivity
Tags: Focus, Work Life Balance, Freelance, Productivity, Work

The Surprising Reason You Love Reading About Productivity

We’re addicted to the failure of productivity.

There’s a concerning trend that powers a huge subset of the content being clicked on, read, and shared these days. I’ll call it ‘productivity-bait’.

Why does productivity bait work so well?

The answer is simple but surprising.

We are addicted to the failure of our productivity.

Now, you might stop here and think, “hold up, he’s got it all backward. Surely if we are addicted to anything, it’s to optimizing our productivity.” But no, I stand by what I said. Let’s take a step back and think this through in the form of a story.

It’s 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. Caroline is at a cafe doing freelance UX work. She’s committed to staying until 5 pm (for nothing other than the arbitrary reasoning that she wants to be able to tell herself that she has put in a ‘full day’s work’).

She’s already had two cappuccinos and a sandwich, and she’s jittery from the caffeine and not actually hungry, but she’s considering buying a brownie. The brownie seems like a good idea because she’s antsy, she can’t focus on her work, and she’d like something to distract herself with.

At 3:40 she goes to the bathroom, thinks “fuck it,” and buys the brownie. She gets back to her computer, opens her email, and follows an article recommendation for “5 ways to boost productivity now.” She feels a little thrill when she clicks the title. She takes a bite of the brownie. Her eyes whiz across the screen.

At the end of the article, she hasn’t learned anything new (most of these articles repeat the same hacks, slightly tweaked, over and over again), but she feels a burst of inspiration and excitement. Why?

Because by reading the article, she has put a box around the antsy, insecure, bored feeling of 3:30 and built a narrow, clearly delineated bridge between it and a better future self.

The future self will always be focused, always have energy, and always be clear-headed. The future self will have more clients than they know what to do with, will work fewer hours, exercise every day, and take up meaningful hobbies. In short, because they have ‘taken care of’ this whole productivity thing, they will be given a VIP pass to an unwavering sense of purpose and fulfillment.

If you really think about it, that’s what lurks behind all this mania around productivity, isn’t it? It isn’t actually about getting more tasks done on any given day, but about what we think we will feel or do after we have somehow mastered the art of productivity.

We think it will stop the doubt, the boredom, the anxiety. We think we will live in a state of certainty, where we don’t have to wonder about whether we’ve made the wrong career choices, whether we are settling, whether this is ‘all there is to it.’

The little boost you get every time you check something else off a list? It’s like a short-term inoculation against existential angst.

There’s great research into the addiction to gambling that I think is analogous to our predilections for productivity bait. Contrary to common opinion, gamblers aren’t addicted to winning, but to losing. If they won all the time, gambling would lose its edge. Instead, what they get addicted to is the heightened stakes as they lose: the more they lose, the greater the rush will be when they win.

They are able to fixate on a singular point that will transform the stressful chaos of losing into the Utopic relief of winning.

Isn’t this precisely what we are doing when we click on the latest article about productivity? Aren’t we purposefully making our current state hyperbolic in its failure in order to more clearly imagine a perfect, alternative future, rather than just accept the gunky, fractured moments of an afternoon?

Because here’s the real truth about productivity.

It isn’t a panacea for achieving a sense of purpose or meaning in life. There’s no amount of efficiency you could attain or master that would provide that. Meaning and purpose come from what we aim for and align ourselves with, not how efficiently we make the movement towards them. Productivity isn’t a verb, it’s a noun. Instead of thinking about productivity as a state of being, it’s more accurate to think about it as a side-effect. When we do the deeper work of aligning ourselves with our values, focusing, and doing what we find meaningful, we will naturally be ‘productive’ in relation to whatever we are working on. (For a great article about why we need to be thinking about focus, not productivity, click here). There’s nothing about productivity that is inherently tied to quantity. Most of the time, when people talk about productivity, they are talking about it in terms of methods to maximize output. But productivity is much more neutral than that: at its base, it is simply the act of creation, of putting something into the world.

So what if we started thinking about productivity in terms of quality rather than quantity?

What if, instead of descending into a pit of anxiety and sugar, Caroline was able to spend the 4–5 hours of focused work we each get every day in a way she was proud of, prioritizing delivering her absolute best rather than taking on too much? What if she completed her priorities and then guiltlessly clocked out for the day, heading to a ceramics class, for a walk, or to read in the park?

What if she knew these activities brought her great joy, a sense of self and stability and engagement, and that they were therefore totally worthy of her time and attention?

What if, instead of feeling guilty after nine hours of staring at a screen and resolving to ‘be better tomorrow,’ Caroline realized that living a happy, meaningful life has very little to do with being productive, and absolutely nothing to do with ‘mastering’ the art of productivity?

So next time you’re tempted to click on a productivity trigger article, ask yourself the following questions:

Why am I drawn to reading this, in this exact moment?

What am I hoping it will make me feel and do?

Is there a different, healthier way I could empower myself?

The answer is probably yes.