Three biggest productivity myths
Before they kill any more of our time, let’s debunk the three biggest productivity myths:
Myth #1 — I’m having fun, I must be wasting time
This one is a result of our age-old hunter-gatherer brain. 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.
Since forever, having fun meant inviting trouble.
In today’s competitive world, we are constantly judging ourselves for wasting time. I have this feeling if I start netflixing on a weekday 📺.
While I’m having fun, there’s this guilt alarm ringing constantly at the back of my mind, “I’m having fun, which means my work (or something else 🤔 ) is suffering.”
It is true sometimes. More often than not, this reasoning doesn’t hold true in this information age.
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 complicated problem.
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 and 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.
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 themselves don’t produce any results.
e.g., when I’m working on an article, I tend to keep researching and planning for days. I realize that the real deal would be to finish writing and publish 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.
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, James Clear clarified 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, planning, discussing, and most corporate meetings are motion.
Writing an article, creating a course, building a product, writing code…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.