We’re Taking Back “Productivity”
We’re Taking Back “Productivity”
It’s World Productivity Day. Why pursuit of "more and faster" misses the mark.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are you busy about?
—Henry David Thoreau1
Today is World Productivity Day, a day the world amps up the focus on how we can do more and better in less time.
And to that, I (and we at Productive Flourishing) would like to say: “No thanks.”
Doing more things, better and faster is not inherently bad — in fact, we can’t claim we don’t help our community do those very things. The issue we have with what this day has become is that it emphasizes the wrong metrics. (Namely: quantity, speed, and pure efficiency.)
We’d rather help you focus on effectiveness, not just your efficiency. We believe in what you do and what that doing does for you.
It’s all built into our name: productive modifies flourishing.
Focusing only on getting more done in less time misses the point. You can spend your days, your weeks, your years, your life focused on counting every task like a widget on a production line. But what would that tally sheet really amount to?
What is all that productivity producing in your life?
Thoreau nailed it in the quote above: it’s not simply about doing but about what you are doing. And to take it one step further, why you’re doing all that doing.
We’re here to help you get to — and finish — the work that matters. To create the space for the work that will help you thrive. What we call best work.
We have many posts and resources to help you in the doing, but today on this made-up holiday I wanted to share some posts that get to the heart of who we are, what we do, and what we mean when we talk about productivity.
Our Take on Productivity and Flourishing
Here’s a roundup of some of our key articles about our beliefs about productivity, and how you can build productivity practices that help you thrive:
👉 An overview of the argument for why productivity ultimately needs to be about efficiency, not effectiveness, because as Charlie puts it:
“We can complete any number of tasks in a given amount of time, pat ourselves on the back, and not have advanced a single meaningful goal.”
👉As true today as it was back in 2008 when this was written. What productivity is, what it isn’t, and how knowing the difference can help you move away from all that endless doing and towards a life worth living.
👉 What do we mean by flourishing? For that, we go back to the ancient philosophers. According to Aristotle, all humans seek to flourish. It's the proper and desired end of all of our actions. In other words, what we do (not how much or how fast) is what leads to our thriving.
👉 Want to understand what’s keeping you from being more productive — or more importantly, what’s keeping you from moving your best work forward? Start with your to-do list. Beneath that list of action items you might just find an orchestra of emotions that are driving the actions you or aren’t taking.
👉 I’ll leave you with a series of questions aimed at helping you identify and prioritize the work that matters. You’re not looking to answer all 52 questions at once, take them one at a time. Here are some suggestions on how you might use these questions to move you into action:
Get unstuck: Sometimes we don’t know what’s keeping us stuck but I guarantee there’s at least one question on the list in this post ☝️ that will hit at the underlying cause. Scan the list and when you hit a question that gives you pause, give yourself time to unpack the answer.
Week-by-week: With 52 questions on the list you might use this as a weekly guide to finishing more of what matters.
Make it random: Have a little fun with it and choose a question at random — pick a number out of a hat or use an online picker wheel to decide on a question and then spend some time journaling your answer. You might just be surprised with where your answers take you.
These are all just a starting point for a reassessment of our relationship with productivity. How might you make that impulse to get the right things done a liberating one this year — instead of getting stuck in a cycle of endless to-do lists and unreasonable expectations?
If you’re intrigued by what a different type of productivity can look like, there’s no better place to get an overview than our Productivity Primer.
Every day could be the right day you decide to change your relationship to your work, what you’re creating, and how you’re creating it.
Additional Support to Help You Do Your Best Work in Q3
We have numerous tools and resources available to help you do more of your best work — in quarter 3 and beyond. Here are two premium resources we just made available to our whole community:
Up until now, our Quarterly Planning Sessions have been available only as part of a yearly Pro subscription ($500/year) — but we’ve decided to change that! We are now offering the option to purchase a single Quarterly Planning session ($129 for the Q3 session). So, if you’re ready to get ahead of your Q3 plans, join us next Wednesday, June 26, 2024. You’ll leave the session with everything you need to turn your quarterly objectives into an actionable quarterly plan.
Back by popular demand! Our Momentum Planner Digital Pack is again available for individual purchase. If you haven’t picked up your 2024 planners yet, you can get the rest of 2024 (July-December) for a special price.
In researching this quote I discovered that the version that is used today (what's above) is a modification of what Thoreau originally wrote in a letter to his friend, H.G.O. Blake, on 16 November 1857: “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?” Since busy is more aligned with today's vernacular I kept the modification above. But it does make me wonder if we were to use the word "industrious" instead of "busy" in our everyday lives if that might shift our perception of the work we are so busy about?
According to Walden.org