We are obsessed with productivity. I am not talking about companies; I am talking about individuals, although companies are the ones who have ingrained in us the notion that we should be efficient at all times.

Everywhere I look (myself included), I find people trying to milk more out of their day.

We have forgotten how to relax. We feel guilty about having a day off. We work during our holidays. We dread going on holiday. Going on holiday means getting behind with your schedule. You do a sh*t load of work before you go and then another sh*t load to catch up when you get back.

Why are we working so hard?

Three reasons, I believe.

We associate our value with what we produce.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once we fulfill our basic physiological, safety, and love & belonging needs, we get on to meet our need for self-worth, accomplishment, and respect.

As more and more of us have fulfilled our bottom three levels of hierarchical needs, we have embarked on satisfying our self-esteem needs. We are on to make a name for ourselves, and in today’s world, it is by creating. The creator’s economy not only demands that we produce. We comply because our self-worth is associated with it.

Image Source: Simply Psychology

We focus too much on the future.

Another reason is that we constantly focus on the future. We have been trained to think that the key to success and happiness lies in securing our future. Work more now so that you can retire early. Build a better future by being productive now to enjoy life later on. This false belief leads us to forego happiness in the present and spend the bulk of our days hunched over our computers, grinding our teeth, reassuring ourselves that the eventual payoff will be worth it.

That eventual payoff never comes. When the time comes to retire and put our feet up, we don’t know what to do with our time. So many retirees go back to work after a few months—many who don’t wither away because of a lack of purpose in their lives.

Productivity is an addiction.

Believe it or not, productivity is an addiction, and more people are getting hooked on it. As soon as you start measuring your output and know you can accomplish a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time, you raise the bar. Unfortunately, it is not just your boss at work who does it to you; your inner boss does it too.

When you are not producing, you get withdrawal symptoms just like a heroin junkie does. So you set yourself new targets. Bigger goals, tighter deadlines. Harsher punishments if you fail to meet those.

What is the solution?

The truth is that constant focus on being productive doesn’t lead to the success and satisfaction we crave. Instead, we’re stressed, tired, and perpetually unhappy, aware there’s always something more to be done.

I am retired. I have no financial need to keep on working. I have a healthy circle of friends. I have a big family. Yet I spend most of my time on the computer.

The solution is simpler than you think; instead of scheduling every minute of our calendars to accomplish something, we should slot in some rest, and doing nothing, and make peace with our limitations that we cannot achieve everything.

REST

Constant efficiency could be counter-productive. For being efficient, the focus is on accomplishing rather than enjoying. Creativity suffers because our brain doesn’t get time to make random connections.

Focused, sequential work is different from the “randomness of thought that occurs during rest,” says Andreasen Nancy C. Andreasen, chair of psychiatry at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Creativity relies on rest and free association. Andreasen coined the term REST (random episodic silent thought) to describe the high neural activity marking states of relaxation and free association.

You are not wasting time when you are engaged in leisure activities. Instead, you are rejuvenating your body and your brain and exposing it to new ideas, and letting it make new connections.

Do Nothing

Jenny Odell, an artist and writer of the book “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” argues that the fixation with productivity has warped our sense of fulfillment and growth.

“The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive,” she writes, “but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.”

Productivity is more like maintenance than creation. Practices based on solitude and observation — such as birdwatching (which Odell recommends), look like inaction but hones attention. And paying attention to things is more rewarding and fulfilling than chasing our tails while being productive.

That might seem like a “self-indulgent luxury” for people with time on their hands, Odell acknowledges, but “just because this right is denied to many people,” she writes, “doesn’t make it any less of a right or any less important.”

Accept your limitations

Oliver Burkeman, in his recent book Four Thousand Weeks, sums it up correctly — you will never be able to accomplish everything you set up for yourself, so accept your limitation and make peace with it.

I agree with him on just going with the flow, doing what feels right at each moment. Unless there is some urgency and we are forced to act, we are always doing whatever feels right in every moment, in any case. Even the most obsessive planners (including me) are still deciding, moment by moment, what to do. It’s just that the specific decision they’re making, for now, is to keep on following the plan.

What is your take on productivity?

Have you been able to plan your days, weeks, months, life?

Do you achieve whatever you have set out to achieve?

What is your conclusion?

Share with me in the comments section.