Productivity. What’s The Point?

A friend of mine recently asked me a question - what is it exactly that you write about? As I attempted to break this down, it got me thinking about why exactly I do it.

Why bother with being productive? Why bother with being better at managing your time? 

As I broke this down in my own head, what quickly came to light is that I do it for peace of mind. I do it to get nearer to what I call mental stillness – that feeling of going through the day with a sense of calm no matter what storms are brewing around you. Or striving with calm as I like to think of it. Not everything will go according to plan but there’s a sense of internal calm as you go about your day. Because when you have systems in place to help you work and live with intention, you don’t capitulate at every sign of a possible hiccup.

Before Productivity

Before I got better at managing my time and developing systems of working, my days were filled with anxiety. At best it was worry and stress caused by very tangible things. And at its worst it was an intangible ominous hum permeating through everything I did. The way I experienced the world was literally different. Colours looked different. Food tasted different. But there you go - it turns out that can happen when you’re constantly frazzled and having to make a decision about every little detail adhoc. Or when the fact that you don’t have enough hours in the day leaves you stuck in a loop of limbo touching five different things at the same time and finishing none.

The sad part is that I thought this was normal. Looking back at even my experience as a child I took a sense of comfort in worry – better the friend you know right? 

And that happened as I started my working life.

Sunday Scaries, Every Day

What I’ve realised though, is that in terms of working life, I’m not the only one who has a natural inclination to worry, or stress. In fact, worry and chronic stress have become accepted parts of our working lives, so much so that we have a term for it! The Sunday Scaries! How we’ve come to accept this as a normal and acceptable baseline for how we experience our lives is a discussion for another day. But I can’t help but think it’s becoming the elephant in the room. Maybe it’s one of the remnants of the protestant work ethic. Or maybe it’s just our inclination to think that work must be hard. No pain no gain we say! And although over the generations the-no-pain-no-gain culture has generally stood the test of time, I think it’s time we looked more closely at the source of our daily stressors if we want to enhance the experience of our working lives. Stress and difficulty do not automatically equate to value. But I digress..

A Torchlight Through Productivity

Simply said, productivity probably won’t make me the richest man in the world. It might not even get me through those levels of promotions as quickly as I want. But it certainly makes my life less painful as I navigate my days. It comes down to intention. The more intention my days have, the less stress I have. And ultimately that’s what productivity systems do. They allow you to think about the future – immediate or distant – and come up with routes to guide you through it. And when you’ve got familiarity with that path ahead, it’s a hell of a lot less painful to walk.

More intention. More calm. That’s the point.