Productivity or Die?
It has been a while since, on a whim, I bought an old Think Pad and installed Linux on it. I am trying, and failing, to muster a justification other than, “shiny, shiny, dopamine, shiny” and “I can use it to be productive”. The question is what do I mean by “being productive”. To paraphrase David Allen, “what does productivity look like?”
I have realised in trying to answer that deceptively simple question that while I had notions of productivity, I had no idea what productivity really means. Trying to dodge the question with a “what does productivity mean for me” drew a similarly resounding silence. And so. A side quest was born!
I am extremely blessed to lie outside the need for busy-ness work. I am not required to produce evidence of work such as trackers, charts or reports. The thing is, however, that while I am free of the requirement to prove I am working to others, years of productivity brainwashing have convinced me that I need to prove I am working to myself. I am, despite the opportunity, not fully free of my “productivity overlord”. And, unlike a real-life overlord where there might be some legal limits (depending on where you live), the king of my personal kingdom knows none.
This all started in my late teens when, for reasons I cannot remember, I picked up a copy of Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within. A student, desperate to succeed, this was my gateway to productivity and hustle culture. I knew I was dyslexic, although my understanding ran as far as knowing I had to work harder for longer than my peers for the same, or slightly worse results. I was going back into education having left the system to go to work, for what i had thought, and planned, would be the rest of my adult life. Education was a gamble and desperate not to fail I plunged into learning how best to learn and how to be a success. (Side note, no one recommended the functional addiction or self-destruction I continued to use.)
My education endeavours were successful, and when I entered the complex world of work, I immediately got immersed in the “grindset mindset”. The result was that I pushed myself continually; I was never enough, never satisfied with what i had achieved, never there, always striving. Achieving a goal was just the step to another bigger goal. If the goal wasn’t outrageous and audacious then it wasn’t worth chasing. While I was fortunate enough to happen accross David Allen’s getting Things Done (GTD) tool agnosticism relatively early, I also invested heavily in the Apple ecosystem because of the software I was using at the time. (Software that has remained Apple-centric)
At this point I want to note that my engagement was driven by productivity and work for success. Although there was what would become the manosphere, including the toxic masculinity and toxic grind culture that was co-opted by innumerable grifter, 10x money gurus, I was never attracted or consciously engaged with that part of the culture. In fact I found myself moving away from any creator or culture which moved away from becoming a better person who could effectively deliver on their promises to others and themselves. The self improvement, business success through good “putting your ladder against the right wall” to use Covey’s analogy, was at my core. As people moved into grift from leadership drifting into various delusions of the prosperity gospel I became very disillusioned with the movement. Much as I found minimalism increasingly less attractive when it was about Grovemade desk accessories and less as a vehicle for being rich through your less is more passive income streams than when it had been about finding happiness and contentment outside the capitalist consumerist mindset. To summarise the more anything becomes commodified or a justification for bigotry the less I want anything to do with it.
There were ongoing positives from my love of motivation and productivity material. A big example being in 2011 after a life changing injury, it helped me comeback from being retired from life to chasing goals and experiencing real success. It was also motivational material that helped me drive myself past my own limits and towards the near life ending series of events that started in 2017. I cannot say that my drive and never stop lifestyle was the cause, but there was no way it wasn’t a significant contributor to what happened and my being disabled now. The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, and I burned so very very brightly.
While my hustle came to an abrupt physical stop, the mindset that I had to be permanently striving, permanently doing something that served my goal persisted. It had gone from something that could have been positive in helping me achieve and manage my anxiety through practical action into a self-destructive negative feedback loop where my anxiety drove me to keep striving and each achievement had me believe I was a bigger and bigger imposter who had to keep moving so I wasn’t discovered.
Feeding into this negative loop was input from an abusive relationship. It was there that I learned that self-care was selfish and that I was never good enough, never providing enough, my desire to be better was a stick with which I was regularly beaten. My self esteem was low because it should be low given the awful person that I was. By the end of it any win I had instantly became a loss. Having a shower was deemed selfish if it took time away from doing something “productive”.
The lessons of a childhood and then thirteen years of constant messaging that I was broken, a failure, an imposter gave me all I needed along side my neurodivergence to build my own prison of non-existent self-worth, imposter syndrome and suicidality. It was a no brainer that the world was better without me. All I could do was forget or do everything I could possibly do to contribute to earn my place. Mostly I could make the world go away while killing myself proving myself to that self-same world. Unsurprisingly life chasing productivity and proof did not end well.
Today I am a survivor, but the years of productivity hustle and abusive messaging still linger. In the morning I write my journal as the first thing I do, before consuming. I create. I pee, text my partner good morning, grab some hydration and sit down with my journal. I am a few months into this, it was enjoyable when I started and I am enjoying it more now than ever. But, every morning I wrestle with the thought that I should be doing something else, you know, something more productive. Even though, journalling is absolutely the best thing for me to be doing from any number of perspectives, daily I pause, look at the time and think, I should be getting on. While I am sat, actually getting on with a very productive task, I am thinking, because it is for my self-care and benefit, it therefore, by default, must be the wrong thing to be doing.
It doesn’t stop there, I pause before my breakfast, made after journalling like my first coffee of the day, and think, is this the thing I am supposed to be doing, aren’t there productive things to be done instead. And so, the cycle repeats itself constantly day after day, task after task, and even more importantly, rest time after rest time. If I am doing, I question whether it is the right thing, when I take an absolutely necessary rest, I am there berating myself for being lazy before I have even started. Rest is for losers, I need to be grinding, the only way to win is by outworking everyone because they are all more talented than me. This destructive mindset feeds on the real aspect of my life where it was my persistence, capacity for work, and ability to keep showing up, keep getting up and carrying on when I had every reason to quit, that did indeed play a big part in the successes that I have had.
At one point I had, “outwork, outlast, overcome” on a homemade poster in my kitchen where I would see it every-day to spur me on when I was in a particularly challenging chapter of my life. Acknowledging that my physical capacity has gone is an enormous, often insurmountable challenge. The reality hurts, physically and mentally. I don’t want to believe the physical capacity has gone because the determination is there. I still want to push, but disability, illness they are obstacles I can’t outwork, I can’t outlast and cannot, therefore, overcome. I don’t need to prove anything, but my brain wants to, it wants one last ride, on final opportunity to come home with my shield or on it. I want to die worthy of Valhalla.
Perhaps poet is a worthy profession for a warrior who has no war’s left to fight except those against themselves. For me I still feel the pull of productivity, the allure of the tracker, the spreadsheet, the goal of submission numbers, words written, poems published. I had the “metrics crisis” because I was looking for the external validation I previously had. Mentally I have to adjust to self-care being the goal, to the process being the point. I can no longer guarantee the sunrise or the sunset. At the same time, I also need to remember that I don’t have to do any of this, instead I get to be a poet, I get to be a partner, to do all the things that make me exhausted. It’s nine years since “I don’t think he is coming back” but it is as vivid in my memory as breakfast, perhaps even more.
It is not productivity or die, even if my brain really wants to convince me it is, and more importantly, it never was, it was made to feel that way by those with a vested interest in me sustaining that illusion. Which is what I want to share, you are not your productivity, no one is, and anyone who lets you think that you are what you produce is both not your friend and a leech that you are best free from.
Until next week chase your own dreams, have an afternoon nap on the way and keep on keeping on.
