the new meaning of
productivity As we see a glimmer of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, we meditate on our experiences and reflect on the outcomes from the last year. Whether you buckled down with work, wrote a novel, or simply binge-watched 8 months’ worth of Friends, it’s safe to say there’s a feeling of change in the air. Perhaps some of our values shifted both on a personal and macro-scale, in regards to what’s important to us and how we want to spend our time. As the world was forced to shut down and slow down, we turned inward and evaluated what really mattered to us. Our time is precious, yet the pressure to be productive and do more is higher than ever and has left some of us feeling like we are not enough. We took a look at how we structure our days and the ways we work and found some adjustments needed to be made both in our that methodologies and relationship with productivity. Going full-
force into slowing down made us reflect on the question, “what does it mean to be truly productive and why do we feel the need to do more?” How did we get here? In order to change a bad habit, it’s important to understand how it all started and where these patterns show up. Industrialization in the United States started the surge for more infrastructure and massproduction culture, setting up the U.S. to be a capitalist super-power. Unfortunately, we’ve adopted these ideologies in many cultures and the assumption that if we work harder to produce more, we’ll be successful or superior. We have been set up to believe life paths based on productivity and power will give us the pictureperfect life we desire. Going to college and getting a secure corporate job, followed to a tee, will lead you to financial security - in exchange for the eternal grind, of course.
