F*ck Productivity and All Its Systems and Apps

I’m so over productivity advice and all the tools.

It feels like the Twitter and YouTube world masturbates over who is more productive, creates more content, uses the latest productivity systems and apps.

And I’m just over here, thinking: “Who cares?!” And more so: “Why do we want to be more productive? What for?” 

And so I keep thinking myself into this rabbit whole of what are the real underlying unconscious intentions and unfulfilled needs that we are trying to pursue and meet by chasing more productivity.

Here is one:

Control.

By worrying and occupying our minds with productivity concepts and systems, we are actually chasing control. But it’s mostly an illusion of control. Because that’s what control is. An illusion.

Here is another one:

Validation.

By being more productive, we feel enough, more worthy, more seen and heard, more successful. It validates our identity and idea of what it means to be a good human in our society.

Beyond that, I get it. We all need to make a living.

And yes, when we start out building a business, we have to put in time and energy to make it sustainable and move it forward. Not manifestation technique can help us transcend this stage of a bit of sweat and tears. Entrepreneurship is for the doers.

But if I’m not driven by passion and obsession, then what’s the point? Then I’m compromising and creating from a place of scarcity.

And then there are the never-ending expectations of the social media algorithms that reward us for creating and posting as often as possible.

After 10+ years of using social media, we are conditioned to believe that we have to keep working the conveyor belt of creating content in order to stay afloat. And not a lot of people question this.

But to get more done so we can get more done? For more followers? More subscribers? More money? Which, for many people, eventually leads to burnout and exhaustion?

It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I personally like to live life. I like to spend my days as much as I can actually interacting with life beyond screens. Because that’s what I’m pretty sure is what I will remember on my death bed.

But the patriarchal system we live in evaluates our performance based on output.

It’s the world we live in and most of us accept this as a fact.

Isn’t all this productivity hype all just distraction from doing the actual work, from facing our inner demons?

How did humanity make it this far without Notion and Roam and The Second Brain and every other YouTuber telling us his top five hacks to be more productive?

People back in the days didn’t have any of those fancy tools and productivity apps and somehow managed to help humanity advance to this point.

Granted, they didn’t have the distraction of social media and the internet.

They didn’t have our constantly activated nervous systems triggering an addiction to adrenaline. They didn’t have all the stressors our modern lives present us with on a daily basis (despite promising a better life).

But still. We are not victims.

We suffer from a lack of focus, because we lack presence and awareness. We have to relearn what it means to pay attention, because our attention decides the quality of our lives.

Are people actually genuine and authentic when they say they love productivity and optimizing every little aspect of their days and output? Like, really? Or are we bullshitting ourselves?

Are we doing our morning routine because we truly love it or in order to achieve something? 

The truth is:

Yes, of course, I struggle with focus and procrastination and digital organization.

After 10 years of being a creator and solopreneur - procrastination is still my middle name.

Trust me, I tried out everything. All the tools. All the advice. 

I have even given advice around productivity in content I created.

Another truth is:

Almost none of the tools and systems work for me.

My information management system is still a mess.

My to-do lists are pretty useless.

I only get a fraction done of what I set out to do every week.

My business is not growing as fast as it maybe “should” be.

But I’m living life over here with all my senses and having fun creating when I do, while others are hustling. 

(Hustling for what?)

Here is what does help me:

Inquiring within. Explore the shadows that are hiding beneath my procrastination.

Being honest with myself about what fills me with joy and what I’m actually filling my work days with.

Trusting that I can work in my own speed and do what excites me and trust that life will work in my favor and keep supporting me. Trusting that if I stay in my zone of genius and joy that flow and $$ will follow.

Cultivating presence, awareness and regulating my nervous system by doing Breathwork and meditation, by spending a ton of time out in nature.

Here is also what helps me:

Embracing what I’m passionate and obsessed about and doing that every single day.

No productivity hacks or tools needed.

These words by Zach Phillips really resonate when it comes to my work, any work:

“It’s important to me that I do it simultaneously for NO GOOD REASON and EVERY REASON.”