Debunking 3 biggest productivity myths
Some myths around productivity are a result of our hunter-gatherer's brain. There’s another evolved one that looks and feels like work. Let’s debunk these myths before they kill any more of our time.
Myth #1—I’m having fun, I must be wasting time
In this competitive world, we are constantly judging ourselves for wasting time. This happens to me when a new season of one of my favorite series is out. My partner and I start watching an episode that turns into 2, 3, 4…Soon, we are bingeing on it.
While I’m having fun, there’s this guilt alarm ringing constantly at the back of my mind, “I’m just having fun, which means my work is suffering.”
It is true sometimes. More often than not, the reasoning is flawed.
Surprisingly, having fun isn’t the most common way people end up wasting time nowadays. It did hold true a long time back when humans were hunter-gatherers. Having fun meant you aren’t watching out for the lion that could kill you for its meal. For our farmer ancestors, having fun meant you aren’t toiling in the fields growing food, without which you’ll starve to death. In the industrial age, having fun meant you aren’t doing the manual labor needed to run the factory. For forever, having fun has meant inviting trouble.
So it’s no wonder that even today having fun is interpreted as wasting time in our mind. In this information age, it doesn’t hold true anymore. You could be binge-watching a series, singing your heart out in a shower, looking out of the window doing nothing while your subconscious is hard at work trying to find a solution to a work problem, or rerunning a new concept you learned in the class today.
Having fun doesn’t imply that you’re wasting time. Untangle ‘having fun’ from ‘wasting time’.
People who are misled by this myth also tend to fall for the following myth.
Myth #2—I’m not having fun, I must be working
The most common way people end up wasting time these days is when they feel they are working but no work is getting done. They are not chilling, they are busy. But, just sitting in front of the computer for hours doesn’t mean it’s work. Sitting with your homework for hours getting frustrated doesn’t mean work.
We tell ourselves, “I’m not having fun. I must be working.” In reality, what we’re doing is fake work. [1]
Fake work is one of the biggest productivity killers these days.
The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.
— Paul Graham in “How to lose time and money”
I personally don’t face this problem because my work isn’t boring. Instead, I tend to fall for the latest variant of fake work, which brings us to the third myth around productivity.
Myth #3—I’m busy, I’m definitely working
Boring isn’t synonymous with work for me. But, I do find myself spending hours doing tasks that in itself don’t produce any results.
e.g., when I’m working on an article or on a video, I tend to keep researching and planning for days. I realize that the real deal would be to finish writing and publish it, write the video script and shoot it. I keep thinking it’s not good enough. I’m not there yet. It does feel like I’m making progress. In reality, it’s an illusion of progress. It’s motion, not action. [2]
When you’re in motion, you are planning, strategizing, learning…they’re all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, directly delivers an outcome.
— James Clear in “Atomic Habits”
In a tweet, he clarifies the idea of motion versus action with specific examples:
If you are unsure whether you’re in the action zone or not, ask yourself these two questions:
- Am I consuming or creating?
- Am I sharing what I’m creating?
Consuming stuff like reading tweets, articles, books, taking a course…it’s all motion. Learning and planning are motion. Writing an article, creating a course, writing a tweet..creation of any kind is action. You need to improve upon your creation, which needs feedback from others. Sharing your creation with others is the fastest way to improve it.
If you’re writing an article, is it lying in your drafts or have you published it? If you were looking for healthy meal options, did you stop after watching a couple of youtube videos or did you buy the grocery you need to prepare that meal?
Asking these tough questions helps us win over these productivity myths.
Having fun doesn’t mean you’re wasting your time. Not having fun doesn’t mean you’re working. Working is when you’re creating stuff and sharing it with others.
Credits:
[1] The concept of fake work is adapted from the essay How to lose time and money by Paul Graham.
[2] The concept of motion versus actions is from Atomic Habits by James Clear.
