Understanding Productivity Shame and How You Can Defeat It
Busyness is a badge of honor in our society. Take notice in your daily conversations how often people try to justify themselves by describing how busy they are. Colleagues will go out of their way to tell you about how early, how late, or how many hours they are working. Friends and other social acquaintances will tell you about all the different activities and projects they are involved with. How many times do you hear people say no by using some version of “I don’t have time” or “I’m way too busy”? These are all ways of trying to elevate their level of perceived importance and it comes from a place of insecurity.
In our society, it is easy to feel shame for not being as busy as an “important” person. This shame is productivity shame — the feeling of guilt for not being busy. It’s easy for us to confuse being busy with being productive. In today’s knowledge worker economy, we are always connected and the lines around work and personal life are blurry at best. Those lines have become even more blurry as we have more and more people working from home. However, when we truly reflect on and consider our values, sometimes the most productive thing that we can do is to “waste” time.
Busyness is defined as “the state or condition of having a great deal to do”. Most people think about productivity as a busy person accomplishing tasks - an arbitrary measurement of how much “stuff” you can get done in a day — or how many items you can cross off of your to-do list. A busy person can feel productive by completing to-do list items without ever considering whether or not those tasks should be performed in the first place.
The point at which we feel productivity shame is different for each person. Because this is different for each person, the underlying cause of productivity shame is a lack of clarity around what it truly means to be personally productive. James Clear defines productivity as “getting important things done consistently”, which brings a level of subjectivity to being productive. After all, what is important to each person will vary. Every one of us can personally define exactly what productivity means for us. This definition can change in different phases of our lives, it can be different from one week to the next, or even from one day to the next.
Every one of us can personally define exactly what productivity means for us.
Was I Productive Today?
Personalizing our definition of productivity requires that we answer two questions: (1) what are the important things in my life and (2) what is the most important thing today/this week/right now, etc.
What are the important things in my life?
One of the biggest takeaways I’ve had from a book in recent years was from Chris Bailey’s book The Productivity Project and his discussion on hotspots. Understanding myself at a macro-level and defining my values by thinking about my “hotspots”, or the various domains of my life has had a great impact on how I think about productivity. Chris has a great blog post here about how to identify and understand your hotspots. Ranking your hotspots in order of importance and also defining the amount of time you would ideally devote to each hotspot per week helps to define what is truly important. For instance, if you define your physical hotspot as more important than your career, you should not sacrifice the time spent each week on your physical health by working additional hours at your job. That may be obvious, but truly defining that and having it written is powerful in making daily task level decisions. Thinking about your life through the frame of hotspots is a great way to define your values.
What is the most important thing today/this week/right now, etc.?
Utilizing the framework developed in answering “what are the important things in my life”, you can better define and prioritize tasks based on your hotspots. This is where systems like Getting Things Done or the Eisenhower Matrix as made famous by Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are crucial to success. As David Allen says, your mind is for having ideas, not storing them. You must get tasks and next actions out of your head and have a system for prioritizing those tasks. How you prioritize your hotspots should be an overall guide in how you make decisions at the task level. It is important to remember that while this should be a guide for you, you must calibrate your priorities with the priorities of key stakeholders in your life (i.e. your spouse, children, parents, boss, colleagues). You and your spouse may have two different ideas on what the most important thing is right now, but the level of importance you place on your relationship with your spouse may change how you prioritize that task or event. The same concept applies for a project that your boss has asked you to do at work. Hold regular “calibration sessions” with the key stakeholders in your life so that you can consistently and accurately define what is most important.
Defeating Productivity Shame
We can all defeat productivity shame by asking ourselves, “Did I accomplish important things today?”. You may be able to answer yes to that question by simply making time for the important relationships in your life, or taking a walk, or practicing mindfulness. Don’t let someone else’s definition of productivity define your productivity.
Defining what the important things are and what the most important thing is allows you to control the narrative on productivity. We were all made to produce. How, when, and what we produce is up to us. Personalizing your productivity definition ensures you are producing the right things at the right time and allows you to avoid productivity shame.
