Fuck the Cult of Productivity

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are ... See more

Slow productivity, more than anything else, is a plea to step back from the frenzied activity of the daily grind. It’s not that these efforts are arbitrary: our anxious days include tasks and appointments that really do need to get done. But once you realize, as McPhee did, that this exhausted scrambling is often orthogonal to the activities that m

... See more

Productivity is not drudgery and chores. It’s your ability to take a vision in your head and manifest it in the real world.

Productivity is also not about working harder and longer. It’s about working more efficiently, which means minimizing waste. Think wasted time, effort, energy, or potential.

Productivity is not some random hacks and silver bulle... See more

"I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being." — Maria Popova