The Dark side of productivity

The dark side of productivity is unfamiliar territory for most people. And that's because people who become a victim of this gruesome destiny get sucked into it unknowingly. Have you joined the dark side yet, or have you managed to stay on the good side of the force? That's a silly question - you don't know yet. That's why I created this article so that you can find out. I would encourage you to put some effort into staying on the light side. Let's find out why.

Chances are that if you're reading this article, you are an ambitious and highly productive person. You probably take great pride in how productive you are. Quite possibly, you are much more productive than anyone else around you. Perhaps you think that people around you are lazy and you celebrate this fact by maximising your productivity even more.

For a lot of people, this attitude carries on for a while. And suddenly one day, you have to stop up and think... Something feels a bit off... You think about what you have achieved over the last two years. You realise that what you have achieved is no more than what your peers or friends have achieved, even though you have been working 10 times harder than them!

Then you start doubting yourself. What happened? Have I not been productive ENOUGH? Surely, I must have been, because I've worked to the point of exhaustion almost every day! And this can be reflected in the number of ticks I have made in my to-do list app or the number of archived cards on Trello.

How come that my lazy friends are achieving more than me than I am?! That's unfair!

Ok, let me give you some insights into what might be happening here.

It has to do with working on the wrong things.

Long-term results VS short-term gains

Are the things you are doing really moving you forward towards reaching your goals? Or are you simply a productivity-addict who feeds off ticking off to-do lists?

Ticking off to-do lists is a really satisfying activity. So satisfying that it's actually... addictive. But if the tasks you are putting on your to-do lists are wrong in the first place, then you will be very "busy", but not actually "productive".

Being busy often gives us the impression that we're being productive. But if you're not pursuing the right things, you are just wasting your time and energy. Being productive consists of doing things efficiently that actually yield results.

Have a good think about this: Do the tasks you tick off every day give you any long-term results? Or are they short-term oriented, simply making another day go by?

Filling up your to-do list with the wrong tasks might be the root of your problem. Before you set up your time blocking schedule and your to-do lists and start churning away at them, you need to take a good look at what you have actually put on there. Do you have activities there that will yield results in the long term? Or is it filled with what I call "maintenance work"?

The to-do list addiction

Reflecting on how you deal with to-do lists is a good way to find out where you stand with the dark side of productivity.

We often fill our to-do lists with unimportant things just because we feel the need to get these tasks out of the way.

I am often guilty of this myself. I have a few different systems of notes with tasks that "need to be done". These are essentially to-do lists that perpetually gets larger and larger and keeps piling up. My main to-do list system is Trello. I use Trello as a way of keeping all my to-dos and notes organised.

Trello is an amazing project management tool. It’s designed to use for collaboration with others, but it’s also really good when used just by yourself.

In a nutshell, Trello is a digital board where you can make lists. Within these lists, you can create individual cards that can contain whatever you want.

Whenever I get a new idea, a new task that needs to be done, a book or film recommendation, I create a new card on Trello for it. The rate at which I create cards is much greater than the rate at which I get rid of cards when I’ve completed that task I’ve written on them. I'd rather not think about how many cards are there now…

Most of these things are tasks I will have to do at some point. Now, the problem is - what I ought to do is more than what I have time to do in a given day. The list only gets longer and longer. And what’s worst about this is - I feel obliged to complete these tasks, just because they're on the list.

Can you see the hole I’m digging for myself here? Everything on this list is things I HAVE TO DO at some point. Making this obligation for myself is a direct pathway to becoming a very busy person. But it's completely unnecessary. It doesn’t make me more productive. The commitment I make to not letting a single task slip away is just an obsessive thought I'm making up.

Why do I feel obliged to not let a single task slip? I know exactly why, and I bet that you can relate to this. It’s because I feel like I'm missing out on an opportunity if I don't action what is there. I don't want to discard it, because I might lose out on something. This makes sense. After all, there was a reason why I put it on the list in the first place.

Outdated tasks

A lot of the things you put on your to-do list are things that are relevant only at the moment you write it down. If you still haven't done them after a few weeks, ask yourself this question - are they still relevant? Or do you only feel you have to complete them out of some promise you made yourself when you put it on there?

One of my students, a retired doctor, once gave me a powerful lesson in how to deal with to-do lists. She told me that she had a whole notepad full of uncompleted tasks that she had to do. And this notepad was thick! The tasks just kept piling up, and it overwhelmed her. Guess how she dealt with this problem.

She threw the whole damn notepad away!

Terrifying, right? I dare you to do the same!

Guess what happened to this doctor afterwards.

A massive burden was lifted off her shoulders. Instead of wasting her time being a slave to her notepad, she could get on with the things that were relevant and important now.

What you don't know won't hurt you. Ignorance is bliss, and sometimes staying in the know is more damaging than helpful.

But what if there was something on the list that she was supposed to do for someone else? Her reasoning around this issue was - if there was something truly important on that list, the person it concerned would chase her up about it.

What can you learn from the dark side of productivity?

You don't need half of the items you put on your to-do lists. They are often written down because of some inspiration you had in the moment. I often ask myself - since I was inspired by it back then, it must be of some value, right? The truth is - a few weeks down the line, it’s probably outdated. And if you haven’t completed the task already, it’s not important enough. All it is now is a burden. Get rid of it. You have more important things to concern yourself with.

A quick tip for how to deal with tasks that might become outdated in the future

Often, I write down “Write down this passage from this book” or “Transcribe the passage from 05:45 of this podcast episode” etc. I feel a need to record ideas from books I’ve read or podcasts I’ve listened to. When listening to a podcast, I don’t have time to write down anything while I’m listening to it, so instead, I write down that I have to write it down at some point. What a waste of time.

This is a good example of a to-do list task that I’m afraid of discarding. If I abandon this task, I would miss out on this amazing idea I just heard on the podcast.

I feel the way I deal with this at the moment is very inefficient and takes up far too much time.

When it comes to recording great ideas from podcasts, this might be the best thing to do:

Be attentive enough to the podcast and try to create some kind of emotional response to what you just heard. If you have an opinion about it or an emotional response, you might remember that moment in time when you listened to that particular episode. And then instead of transcribing the whole idea afterwards, make a quick note of what episode of what podcast it was. And then maybe a sentence that describes the topic. Don't write any more than that.

This gives you the opportunity to go back and listen to it again if you ever need to. And make sure that the document or location you write this note down in is a place where this note stays there permanently. This will save you from another very common task: “Move this note over to [this other place where I keep permanent notes].”

Missing out on essential long-term gains

As well as falling into the trap of working on the wrong tasks, there are some other important things you might be missing out on when your life becomes one big to-do list.

Completing tasks becomes more important than other essential activities. You dismiss anything that is not on your to-do list. Instead of meeting up with colleagues for a drink, you choose to get some more things done from your to-do list. You don't see how you can take some immediate value from meeting up with your friends and colleagues.

It's too easy to fall into this trap of constantly prioritise tasks where we experience short-term productivity gains. We often jeopardise relationships and other valuable skills because we move too quickly and because we prioritise the wrong things. We often prioritise things that can quickly be accomplished and always push back activities that take time. But activities that take time are of huge importance. Learning, reading and expanding your network are some good examples.

You might feel that meeting up with friends or colleagues to have a chat might be a waste of time since you won’t necessarily talk about something valuable. But if they're the right kind of people, there are still benefits of meeting up with them:

• You get to practise the skills of argumentation and communicating your ideas.
• You pick up a lot of social skills. This is extremely important for persuading and reading people.
• Friends and family are also good assets for you if you think in purely egocentric terms. You can't do anything alone. When one aspect of your life is not going well, it will affect the other parts of your life. It's all inter-connected. To be truly productive, all aspects of your life need to go smoothly, including your relationship with the people around you. Friends and family are also extremely valuable in terms of the support that you are very likely to need from them. No matter what you're trying to achieve, you can rarely do everything alone. You need the support of friends and family to back you up. Invest a little bit of time on family and friends, and you will get a ton of value back.

So when making a decision between ploughing your way through that list or go to that party, at least sometimes, choose the party.

Some final advice

Identify which of your daily tasks that take up a lot of time, but are just about getting something immediate out of the way.

Identify the nature of your tasks. Are they essential to get done? If yes, try to get them done as quickly as possible.

But hopefully, you will also find that some of these are actually not essential at all, but only make you busy and gives you the impression that you're being productive. Delete these tasks straight away. Remember - just because you at some point wrote something on your to-do list, doesn't mean you're obliged to complete it. It’s probably not relevant anymore. Scrap this task, and get on with the things that really matter.

And lastly, try to do at least one thing every day that serves your long-term success and that you perhaps normally wouldn't do. Make sure you get time for learning, reading and for expanding your network.