How to be unproductive

Why going nowhere, gets you somewhere [Don’t Work: Part 04]

Aug 11, 2024

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Series: Don’t Work | Part: 4 of 10 | Reading Time: 6 mins
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This is part of the series, Don’t Work, exploring our identity and meaning around work.

I. The Productivity Promise

Confession: I used to be a huge productivity nerd.

I read all the books. I knew all the frameworks. I tried all the tools. I even taught productivity classes at work. A purebred productivity lover.

My email inbox was empty. My calendar was full.

I hit every day hard. Damn hard. Looking to drive as much output as possible. My work production was my worth.

And it worked. I got a lot done. I developed a reputation for being a reliable “go-getter.”

The productivity promise was fulfilled! To-dos complete. More done. Days busy. Success realized. Check, check, check!

Until I hit a wall. More precisely, an unraveling.

And the productivity principles no longer applied.

II. The Invisible Lists

If you’re like me, you have three invisible lists in your head, which classify activities into the following:

Productive
Maybe Productive
Unproductive

You have no idea where these come from. But I’m guessing they look something like this:

We assign each activity accordingly. And based on the % of our day devoted to each, we decide whether today was a good day or not. Now we can calculate our worth.

We’re constantly monitoring ourselves. A governor overseeing what’s worthy of our time.

We’re unable to do anything unproductive without feeling some level of guilt. That sinking feeling of regret and shame, telling ourselves we should have done things differently.

We worry about falling behind. Getting outpaced by our peers, losing to the competition, unable to catch up.

We think about the weight of our obligations. The bills to pay, a family to support. And every moment we fool around is an immoral act against our most important values and duties.

So this subconscious judge feels justified. We should try to get more out of our days. We should try to get a lot done. We should spend our days productively. Right?

III. What got you here, won’t get you there

There’s a book called: “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”. It’s about the transitions we experience in work, especially going from an individual to a leader.

The fundamental premise is that the things you did to get you to this level of success, are the exact things holding you back from the next level.

These lessons are counterintuitive and difficult to digest, as we must forgo and distance ourselves from our old identities and values that served us well in the past.

In the same sense, being productive was now counterproductive.

I was stuck. And there was no amount of productivity that could help me navigate this new landscape.

I thought that I could solve my problem by getting more done... but get what done? Where was I going?
I thought if I got more done, I could fill the void inside me… but what is a completed task, other than the moment right before a new, uncompleted task?
I thought with focus, I could pick a project and go for it… but what if I was executing with blinders on, unable to see the big picture?

Productivity didn’t work. More tasks didn’t work. More deadlines, more plans, more, more, more of the same didn’t work.

Productivity became purposeless.

IV. Embrace the opposite

“What if I tried doing the exact opposite of everything I had been trained to do?”

I’m known as an intense operator. A builder of systems that help scale teams and organizations.

I could take an abstract problem and implement frameworks to find a way out:

Goals - What are we trying to achieve?
Metrics - How do we measure success?
Plans - How do we get from here to there?
Deadlines - When should we get this done?
Process - How do we make success repeatable?

Sound familiar? Yes, these are the bedrocks of any well functioning organization. And the old me would have also concluded, a well functioning human.

Well, I’ve changed my mind.

While these instruments worked in the past, what I needed was something different. What got me here, won’t get me there. So I tried doing the opposite. I tried to unlearn productivity:

No Goals - instead, have some broad themes of what to act on
No Metrics - instead, pay attention to my subjective experience (over objective results)
No Plans - instead, let my activities and projects spontaneously emerge
No Deadlines - instead, let things get figured out in their own time
No Process - instead, trust myself to figure it out along the way

Less expectations. Less pressure. Less discipline.

It was an act of minimalism. A decluttering and decumulation of all the structures that allowed “productivity” to blossom. But it was also an act of rebellion against my old, established rules.

I tried all the “Unproductive” stuff that previously made me feel guilty. I pushed through the shame of watching a movie or playing a video game in the middle of the day. I walked aimlessly and followed random curiosities down pointless rabbit holes. Some days I accomplished virtually nothing, making zero progress on any projects.

And ironically, being unproductive was the most productive thing I could have done.

V. Productive un-productivity

For some of you, this may sound like the dumbest idea possible.

You cannot imagine yourself without goals or deadlines. Without making constant “progress,” even temporarily. It’s as if life would become instantly unhinged. And you’d fall into an abyss of aimlessness, unable to claw your way back.

Maybe you could make it a week like this. But a month? A year?!?

But, and here’s the main point folks: I only found my way out by giving in and letting go, without the pressure to “get somewhere.” Here’s why:

Being unproductive gave me space to figure myself out. Outside the authority of my old instincts, I could return to being human. Not just an output-oriented machine.
It made me comfortable with the present. I wasn’t trying to get past this current moment to get to another moment, in the future, that was supposedly better.
I wasn’t trying to force myself into some pre-planned box. Not follow the momentum pushing me toward an unnatural destination.
I was able to regain my interests and enthusiasm, now capable of differentiating between what I thought I wanted and what I really wanted.

All this took a while, no doubt. Nothing clicked into place automagically.

If you were to zoom into any one of my days, during this time, you would see someone flailing about. You’d think: “this guy has no idea what he’s doing!” And “what a huge waste of time!”

But zooming out, looking at the big picture, being unproductive was the most productive thing I could have done.

By letting go of my need to always get more done, I was making space for the kind of growth that couldn't be measured by a to-do list. In it, I found clarity, creativity, and a renewed sense of purpose.

And all this has led me to rethink what it means to be ambitious.

In my next piece, I’ll explore ambition further: What does it look like when it’s not driven by the need to produce? How can we pursue meaning without losing ourselves in the process? How can we be an author of our own ambition?