Procrastination Nation
Productivity Culture's Curse
Dear Death,
I feel like I’m going to waste my whole life in procrastination. My mind always makes some excuse to put the important tasks off. I know I should just make myself do the next thing on the list (and I make so many to-do lists). I end up feeling so down on myself when I catch myself on social media instead of finishing a project.
I want to be productive! But some part of me just can’t be bothered. What can I do?
Sincerely,
Unproductive
Dear Unproductive,
You ask what you can do. But it sounds like this emphasis on always doing and judging yourself isn’t working. For you it sounds like productivity culture has become, well, unproductive.
Productivity culture is 24/7 access to work messages and emails. It is the assumption that the most successful people are the ones who get the most things done. It is the erasure of boundaries between work and free time. It sucks the attention away from family, hobbies, and friends. And then it siphons the attention away from focused work as people inevitably steal back the time they desperately need off in distractions. When it goes too far, people have what they describe as “burn out” when they can no longer do the work they used to do at all.
If you find your attention being sucked away from work by the infinite distractions of the internet, you may be experiencing some level of burn out. And while you may win back a couple minutes of time from working too much watching videos on the internet, it isn’t real time away because you feel guilty about the time and accomplish little. And if you beat yourself up for taking little breaks, you exhaust yourself further with anger or shame. That self cycle of self-judgment further decreases your capacity to focus.
I would suggest trying to turn the whole question on its head. In order to do more, start with how you can do less. First, create stronger boundaries around your personal time. Perhaps you can have one day a week where you don’t look at email or work messages at all. Perhaps you can try a cut off time where you stop looking at or thinking about work.
Try setting aside time for something totally unrelated to work that you enjoy like gardening, knitting, reading or anything. If your work and most common distractions both happen on screens, I recommend that this hobby be off-screen. Use your hands or get outside the house. Or maybe join a bowling league or play board games with friends. Let this time off be as sweet and refreshing as you can make it. Take lunch and don’t work during your lunch break.
Then, after you feel like you have a healthier personal life, start to make boundaries around your work time as well. Set aside time for deep work where you don’t look at email or work messages until particular times during the day. When you know you will have real time off at a reasonable cut-off time, the compulsion to take a break from the distractions on the internet will likely be less
The data affirms this approach of balance as the true path to getting stuff done. Societies in Europe with 35 hour work weeks routinely have a higher productivity score than the places like the United States doing 40-50 hours. Yes, people who work 35 hours a week routinely get more done than people who work 40+ hours per work. If you work too much, you’ll get distracted and overall productivity goes down.
For millions of years of human evolution, people did most of the work they needed to survive in about 20 hours per week, then maybe did another 10 in light work. People aren’t made to be machines. You will get more done if you don’t let work take over your life.
Since this is the ASK DEATH column, I will also tell you that working too much is a top end-of-life regret. To live a life you are proud of, you will need to nurture and protect time spent with the people and things that matter most to you. From that perspective, that time with friends playing board games is worth protecting no matter how frivolous it can appear at the time.
Protect your free time. Protect your time with family and friends.. Then use the same strategies that worked best to draw a protective circle around your personal life to protect you from distractions at work. Start with making boundaries around your personal life because it will be more effective.
Good luck having more fun,
Death
The Croak Section
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Hansa