A productivity junkie is not the one who is productive but consumes lot of productivity contents on a regular basis

Despite what the title suggests, the article doesn’t mean to be a condescending one. many of you might come across new-gen productivity books and videos. I personally have been on this journey for quite some time. Some of these ideas were helpful. But often I feel the urge to go through more content about the same topic as I slip to the inevitable entropy of life and chaos. The reason I am writing this is to have some clear reflection on myself. I am putting it out there on the internet since this might be relevant to someone who is on the same path.

The trigger for this article happened when I was watching a video by Ali Abdal, a young productivity guru on YouTube, explaining how he remembers every book that he reads. This is one of the most relatable problems for me. I used to read non-fiction books. But when I had to explain the book or some points discussed in it, my mind goes blank (followed by self-pity that if I cannot take away anything from a book why bother reading it). We can discuss this topic another time. But what struck me most is one of the comments made by a follower.

I know the YouTube comment section is a rabbit hole. Still, I was checking through them to see the reaction of different people on the subject. There were many praises, some success stories and some puns. The comment which made me laugh and later think is the following one.

It got more than 2K likes and many people responded saying that they were doing the same thing. Why this is so familiar? Are we all falling into this trap of getting high on productivity video instead of actually being productive? Please don’t expect any solution from this article. All I wanted to do some self-reflection, which in turn might lead to some solutions.

Procrastination of the intellect

Back in my PhD days, I used to have the habit of hearing some of my favourite sitcoms while doing work that doesn’t need much attention. I reasoned that these do not need any deep brain activity. And if I hear something enjoyable, I can spend more time doing the work without mental resistance. This worked initially and I could spend long hours in the lab. But over time, I noticed that this will change your focus from finishing the job to mindlessly do something. And I started making a lot of mistakes.

This is nothing but procrastination of the intellect. Being cognitively active is a painful, tiring process. We often need to switch off our brain to reduce the cognitive load. Deep work requires your cognitive system to be active for a long time. But the monkey in your brain is convincing you that work can be done even after shutting off your brain by consuming content. The biggest issue with such an approach is that you will have even higher resistance to come back from that lazy state. And you will end up doing ineffective work for a long time without good results.

One solution to this is a good work-life distinction that reduces your mental resistance. Fixing the time of exit every day is one of the best ways. This is the step that I fail often. The open-ended working hours are generally not good for productivity. That reminded me of something! I need to read the book “Deep Work” by Carl Newport. A quick appreciation by Amit Varma can be read here

Productivity porn

Eventually, after many dark days, guilt kicked in and I started to fight this urge to switch off the mind. This was years back and at that time the productivity porn was not this popular. After following the pursuit of productivity, I notice that I am in constant judging mode. I am criticizing myself for every minute of the hour that I have “wasted”. Rather than being active, thought of being active consuming a lot of time.

After being “productivity awake”, you want to convince yourself that you are always productive. Here sitcoms are being replaced by productivity video. You have the false sense that this will help you for being more productive. But eventually, it’s another way of procrastination.

I have nothing against people who follow these videos or books. But getting addicted to consuming more and more productivity content is not the solution. The same goes for productivity apps. After listening to different people I hoped between app to app for taking notes, scheduling etc. The final result is nothing but utter chaos. Later I tried to stick to one tool for one purpose. Notion for taking notes and casual writing, outlook calendar for reminder and planning and One Note for work-related writings and notes. For the basic to-do list and tracking a months progress ( again work), I went old school, thanks to the whiteboard behind my desk.

But where does it end? If you follow one method, you are not following a thousand methods at the same time. How can you be sure that yours is the best? What if you become so mechanical about it?

Being mindfully productive

This takes painful practice. If I say that I have achieved this state, I would be lying. However, I try to be in this state most of the time. Mindfulness is generally associated with mediation (which I am not a big fan of). But the context here is a bit different. Rather than the mindless following of one method or a productivity guru, one may take pauses and have a self-reflection. Dare to ask questions to yourself that, is it working alright? Am I being consistent here? Am I just satisfying myself to procrastinate from the real work? or am I wasting time thinking about not being productive?

Even when you achieve this mindful state, you may fall off the wagon often. But the consistent approach will help you to intervene. You may take the help of your guru or book or method in this process. The tricks and tips they share are to be taken only as a way to get back to the game. Watch out for the little monkey in your head fooling yourselves. A productivity junkie is not so far from a Netflix junkie.