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 fullforce 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.

Undoubtedly, these ideals have shifted tremendously over the last decade as we see start-ups, self-employed entrepreneurs, and self-taught creatives countering these pasé traditions. Yet the problem is still unresolved, as the culture of mass production has seeped into our minds and stays with us like a parasite.

The corporate employee and small business owner alike still feel the pressure to produce more content. Whether it’s posting on your social media to promote your brand or the pressure to create content; musicians, writers, and visual artists all fall into this trap, as their livelihoods could depend on it. As the culture of content consumption sets off like rapidfire, our attention spans have been reduced to seconds and we find ourselves needing more. We ask for another song from our favorite artist, another season from our latest television obsession, or another bestselling novel. The standard for more is set exceptionally high - no wonder so many folks are taking mental-health breaks.

Granted, the idea of not working indefinitely feels farfetched, but there is a healthy balance we can maintain to where we can take a beat to appreciate our hard work yet not overdo it. Countries like Italy and the Netherlands culturally value down time - relaxing with a glass of vino and eating fresh bread along a lovely river scene. These activities are scheduled out regularly among work priorities. Many of us can relate to not being able to stop and smell the roses.

So What’s Changed? It’s as if the lights have finally turned on and we’ve just woken up to the importance of self-care and finding pure joy and passion. Some may feel like there is an overwhelming amount of extra time in our lives - because of the deficit of connection, employment, or even a few hours of commute time. With these things out of the picture, we had time to contemplate and find clarity in what in our lives was working and what wasn't.

Looking at companies that went remote, we’ve found that more hours inputted doesn’t necessarily mean better quality work. There are several ways to aim for working smarter, but intentional actions- knowing our strengths and limits- are great places to start as we dig into this mindset.

When it comes to intentionality, we don’t mean simply choosing the right shirt to wear for a zoom call. Being intentional is about being purposeful with what we set out to do, our goals, and outcomes, before doing any actual work. Take a blog post, for instance, there’s a clear difference between setting out to write a series of three posts versus growing a blog subscription base to 5,000.

Half of the battle comes from setting ourselves up for failure with unrealistic goals and deadlines that we’ll be sure to miss. The key is breaking our

tasks down into small manageable bite-sized pieces, one’s we can confidently complete - the Pomodoro Technique is a great productivity framework that incorporates breaks as well as S.M.A.R.T. goals, which are used to set intentional steps forward. If we are aimlessly overworking ourselves on the wrong things or impossible goals - we could be wasting time or heading for burn-out central.

Knowing our strengths is the backbone of a more efficient workflow. The classic fable of the soloentrepreneur doing it all themselves is one of hardship and frustration. People are often really good at one thing, and just okay at everything else. So instead of trying to do it all in a sub-par manner, some are taking the approach of outsourcing and delegating tasks to people that are better suited in those skill sets - knowing they can now efficiently focus on doing that one thing really, really well. We need to remember; even the strongest and smartest of people have help.

Just as important as strengths, limitations are worth mentioning as well. Each of us has a certain threshold of work capacity until our energy starts to become depleted. If we choose to ignore our threshold time and time again, our work not only lessens in quality, but we become exhausted and fatigued. We start to reach a place of hopelessness and even start to dislike the work we do. The good news is, we can replenish our energies through rest, self- care, and doing things that bring us joy. That way, we are able to get back up and do it all again tomorrow, but more importantly, do it right. The idea has been instilled in us, that the more effort we put into something the more successful it will be - instead we could reframe this to say: the more of a positive outlet we can put into something, the more likely we are to get back on the horse.

What do we do now?

Now that we’ve squashed the “more is more” theory, we know to focus more on what feels good to us versus what we feel we have to do. Focus our energy on

things we enjoy doing and don’t overfill our plate. Make time to rest and practice self-care - you’ll find once rejuvenated, ideas and effort will come more easily. We know this is easier said than done with the constant “should” on our minds, so we must always circle back to our original goals and our why - the reason we do what we do. Being human, it’s easy to attribute our sense of worth to our work - but we are worth so much more than what we do in our day jobs or how many tasks The next time we judge ourselves and feel like we are we can check off on our to-do lists. We are whole on our own, without having to lift a finger. not doing enough, and ask, We now know there’s a clear

“Am I doing this for me?” difference between healthy productivity, which is based on self-improvement versus the external validation of toxic productivity. The next time we judge ourselves and feel like we are not doing enough, we should ask, “Am I doing this for me?” We understand that the relationship with productivity is based upon a long-standing tradition of societal expectations that we carry on our backs. If we can start to draw that line between expectations and intentions, between healthy productivity and over-achiever mentality, we can refocus our power into the right actions to be productive for the better.