Productivity is a fucking stupid goal. And it is no longer mine.
I woke up early this morning, and took a long pause.
I literally spent an hour lying in bed and feeling thankful that I live a life in which I can do that.
It was dark out, and without my phone, I watched the light spread across Sydney and I put on a jazz record and I tried to breathe, and relax. When I got to the city early before hitting our startup’s HQ for the day, I. sat in a warm cafe, by the fire, and I drank hot black coffee and read a book that had nothing to do with tech, with startups or - to be honest - anything except dragons and wizards.
I got a coffee and a vegan triple chocolate cookie to go and I walked down to Miller’s Point in the cold to start my day. I’m writing some press releases, and I’m working on some comms messaging pieces for our startup and a couple friends.
This is the kind of morning I love. It’s the kind of morning I live for. It’s the kind of morning I am ridiculously privileged to be able to enjoy.
And it’s got nothing to do with trying to have a lifehacked morning routine. Nothing to do with trying to “maximise my potential” or some other dumb wankery. It’s just about trying to quietly, carefully and safely enjoy my life and not get cosmic.
I wonder sometimes where we went wrong, where we started to believe that for an activity to be worthwhile, it had to have an ROI. I wonder where we decided that sitting quietly was a waste of time, that reading non-fiction that couldn’t teach us “10 Amazing Lessons About Life” wasn’t important. I wonder how we get back from there.
Life is so fucking fast. It moves fast, and we’re expected to respond to it with equal speed, energy and effort. Slack messages get sent later and later, or earlier and earlier, and our response times are measured and noted. Weekends aren’t for walking the dog or catching up with friends anymore, they’re for side hustles and getting on top of next week. When we get home from work, we’re shamed for watching Netflix and chilling tf out, when we could be trying to make more money, more often.
People make a full time living these days blogging and shooting videos for other people to consume about how to be more productive. Gods above, what a waste of effort and energy. And time. Precious, beautiful, vanishing time.
There’s some beauty in giving all of that up, in understanding that hustling, grinding and chasing productivity is only throwing away the short sliver of existence you actually have. In my first act, I was a record producer, and a songwriter, and I would work full time for a music company during the day and hit the studio until 4am every morning. My nervous breakdown was inevitable, and it was brutal.
In my second act, I was a startup blogger and content creator, I was a tech CMO, I was an indie writer, and I worked myself half to death rather than work on myself. My health is still recovering.
Both of those lives were ruled by work. By obsessive, harmful work at all costs. By sacrificing my own soul, my own happiness, my own sleep and my own time.
In my third act, I am quieter. I am a little smaller. I am a lot less ambitious where that ambition would require membership of the productivity cult. I am creative in a way that I enjoy, I take my time in a way people might not understand, and if it means I achieve less, I have no complaints.
I don’t think you need to be giving everything you have, all of the time. I think you’ll regret it, the way I regret it. Maybe you deserve to take a few more slow mornings, too.
Joany 🍕