Feeling down?
Lazy?
Unproductive?
Are you tired of wasting day after day scrolling through your phone or playing video games all day?
Do you feel you need to do MORE or at least do something instead of being a piece of furniture in your own home?
FEAR NOT!
YouTube is filled to the breaking point with “productivity tubers” YouTubers who teaches people how to be more productive and stuff.
Why is there such a big focus on productivity and why is it all bullshit?
I’m glad you asked, Let’s find out!
Productivity stems from the corporate world where the term means something like:
The measure of output per worker, per hour, or some crap like that.
You all know what the term means, it’s about how much shit you get done in a certain amount of time.
The workplace is designed to be unproductive
First of all, it is widely accepted that humans can only focus for about 4 hours a day, some can focus a little more, some a little less. The idea of having the workday be 8 hours is terrible and a remnant from a time long gone. The truth is that most people go to work and work for 4 hours. The rest of the time they try to look like they work.
More and more jobs are boring office jobs, if you are a carpenter or someone who works with their hands producing something then you do the Lord’s work at this point. The rest of us go to our 9-5 where it is impossible to do proper work because the workplace has built-in distractions.
Newton did not work out the theory of relativity in a cubicle or an open office place. If you have a lot of people around you the chances of getting distracted are that much higher. The goal is to enter the flow state of work which is impossible for Karen keeps talking about her stupid kids.
Maybe you have your own quiet office where you can get some work done. Good for you, you are one of the lucky ones, yet your flow is also under attack from the constant bombardment of E-mails.
You start your day getting some work done, then an Email pops up, and another one, and another one, or maybe you start your day answering all your Emails which is not work, the work you have to do is the work you get paid to do, and that is not answering Emails.
Another booby trap of the workplace is meetings where people who do not do real work talk about what everybody else ought to do. Going to meetings is such a waste of time, they are rarely scheduled properly with way too much time being wasted on crap.
The perfect work day is where you meet and you work focused on your actual job in chunks without distractions. After 4-5 hours meetings and mails can be worked on.
The British Philosopher Bertrand Russel talked about the 2 types of jobs
The workers who move stuff around (the producers)
The workers who tell others to move stuff around (the middle managers)
The first one is not paid very well, the second gets paid the big bucks.
Why is it like this? You might ask, because capitalism is predicated on keeping the working class down that is why a work day is 8 hours even though there is no need for it. The 8-hour workday is particularly cynical since you are tired enough so you don’t do anything when you get home other than watching Netflix, but it is also short enough so you can do it the next day and the next. It robs you of your freedom and your only life.
We all know this to be the truth yet no one can talk about it for fear of being called a communist or lazy. Capitalism has done some good things for us, but it is time to seriously rethink it instead of doing the same old shit.
The workday used to be much longer and in other countries, a workweek can reach up to 60 hours. Change is possible.
The Burnout Society and Hustle Culture
German/Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote the book The Burnout Society where he outlined a lot of problems with the modern-day workplace. According to Han, the problem arises from an excess of productivity.
Han outlines a society obsessed with achievement where nothing is enough. To Han, the problem is an abundance of positivity.
“Of course, I can stay for an hour more”
“I will be glad to work weekends”
“Of course, I can be more productive”
We have little in-between time to figure out who we are and what we want.
Another aspect of the burnout society that Han does not talk about, but is yet still prevalent is the concept of grinding or hustle culture in which you are incentivized to work ALL THE TIME!
Just keep working, don’t worry about the fact you only have a limited amount of focus a day, just keep working and don’t you dare stop for if you do you might find the existential angst creeping up on you again. And we can’t have that.
The question is
What am I exactly supposed to be working on? Every single hustle culture guru is oddly vague about this part.
What if I already have a job?
Start a side hustle or build your own business.
As Han said we are pressured to all be entrepreneurs and a lot of the YouTupe productivity channels feel like they are targeting the wannabe entrepreneurs. Don’t think too much, just grind! The fact that 90% of startups fail is irrelevant, it is only because they did not grind enough.
Luck plays a major role in being successful, much more then fucking grinding dose, that is not to say you should not work hard and that you should not make sacrifices IF you want to be an entrepreneur, but again most people are pressured to be an entrepreneur without really wanting to. Ebtrupernourship is seen as the only worthwhile pursuit.
Also, the idea of a side hustle is stupid as hell.
You can no longer just have a hobby that makes you happy, everything has to be monetized.
Do you like cooking? Make a YouTube channel or God forbid a TikTok account.
No one is finding what makes them happy because everything is about that DOLLAR YALL. CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME! C-R-E-A-M.
It is easy to have a side hustle if you already have a giant following. If you are just some random dude you won’t grow a following that fast.
Just look at me I am writing on this blog with no readers why? Because I like doing it, it’s my hobby, it’s an outlet.
No one in society is talking about happiness and fulfillment. That is why we have hundreds of models to measure output in the workplace and none to measure fulfillment or happiness.
Productivity is not only prevalent in the work environment, but more so than ever the need for productivity on the home front is increasing.
What exactly am I going to be productive about? What should I do when I get home from work? The answer should of course be “exactly what you want to do”. After a long day at work, there is not exactly something you should do.
The perfect routine doesn’t exist
If you want to be more productive you can watch productivity tips on YouTube or even worse productive vlogs made in a “Day in a Life” style. The problem with productive vlogs is that they are mostly people who are already content creators, so they wake up and have to do some filming and editing, yet the majority of the video is filled with shit like workouts and skincare routines… Is this productivity? These blogs are spending very little time on the thing they are producing.
It seems like nobody knows what the word productivity means anymore. Is it really a productive day if I wake up, make breakfast, work out, and do a skin routine? Are these not normal ass things to do? Productivity online means to “live with purpose” or something like that. Whereas in the corporate world, it means how much you produce.
All these tips and vlogs are plenty, but the point of productivity is so simple it almost hurts me how much time people spend producing productivity content when it can be boiled down.
Here is the rundown:
During the day there are things you NEED to do and things you WANT to do. If you have to do your job and provide for yourself or your family. That would be a thing you NEED to do. Work takes up the majority of the time for most people. After your work you can do what you want, here lies the tricky part. Most people have something they WANT to do, it can be anything from learning to play an instrument to writing a book. However, most people get distracted during the day and end up not doing what they want. The average adult is on social media 3-4 hours a day, which is plenty of time to build a good habit. The problem is that most people do not live an authentic life so they have no idea what they want.
MY productivity tips
TIP: put your phone away and do what you are passionate about
Identify what we NEED to do during the day, it could be to do work or clean the house, pick up kids, or whatever. Afterward, identify what you WANT to do in your heart. It could be writing a book. You set a block of time to do those things, preferably as early as you can. If you can wake up an hour earlier and work on your book before you go to work you will make a tremendous change in your life. If you do not have time in the morning carve out some time
When you have done what must be done and what you want to do, you are then free to do whatever and with no guilt. Do not feel guilty and think you should do more, focus on what’s at hand, and try to do it again the next day.
The big mistake people make when they plan their day is they plan for the best-case scenario instead of a realistic one. Some days the energy level is just low and you do not feel like doing much.
Again focus on doing what NEEDS to be done and what you WANT to do that no matter how little gets done consistency is king. If you find yourself never being able to do all the things on your to-do list, do less and get it done. Don’t rely on motivation but on a consistent schedule.
It is completely fine if you just want to sit down and watch Netflix or scroll on your phone as long as it is something you truly want and not something you do as a reflex to boredom.
If you take your passion and try to make money from it, it will slowly become like a second job and you will grow to dislike it. The real reason everybody wants to turn their passion into a career is because (as stated before) most people hate their jobs and with good reason. Capitalism is not a system concerned with the individual, but with profit, profit to the people who already have enough money.
Therefore you are kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
What am I going to spend my time on?
Isn’t it telling that we feel a need to be productive even after we have already been to work?
The reason I think you should not try and make money from your hobby is that leisure time is more important than a couple of extra bucks. Without proper relaxation, you will not be able to perform as needed.
Leisure time is almost vilified in modern society. Instead of feeling accomplished from a long day’s work, people either feel the need to do more which leads to burnout or they feel they are not able to do anything other than just sit and be like a potato (solitary tiredness).
The existential angst
The whole issue (as I see it) is a fear of death. The fear that when we are on our deathbed we look back at our life with regret of not doing more. To combat this we fill our calendar up with tasks and events, for if the noise ever stops we are left with our thoughts and that is terrifying. This is also why so many people had trouble doing the COVID lockdowns. Because most people do not take the time to listen to their own thoughts in fear of an existential crisis they keep the noise up, always with headphones in and whatnot. Most workaholics are coping with their existential dread and they know if they stop they will have to deal with their thoughts.
The truth is that the vast majority of people feel regret for working too much and not spending enough time with their loved ones. The fix is therefore not to do more, but to do less. Schedule time with family and friends is more valuable than mindless “productivity”.