The Messy Truth About Productivity | #203
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We are obsessed with productivity. We optimise our diaries, automate our systems, time-block our days, download the apps, chase inbox zero, and now enlist AI to help us squeeze even more output from the hours we have.
But productive for what?
The idea of productivity makes perfect sense when you're measuring the output of a factory. When the work is thinking, writing, deciding, creating, building relationships, or simply knowing what not to do, things get considerably messier.
In this episode of Messy Business, I question why we've become so addicted to feeling productive, and whether much of what we call productivity is actually busyness, procrastination, anxiety, or our discomfort with doing less.
I talk about the strange economics of a client relationship that took ten years to turn into paid work, the very serious matter of the correct way to unload a dishwasher, Parkinson's Law, the productivity industry, AI-assisted faffing, and why some of the highest-value work you do may produce absolutely nothing visible at the end of the day.
I also explore the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and why real productivity may have far less to do with getting more done and far more to do with deciding what deserves your finite time and attention.
Because if you've done the work that actually matters by lunchtime, perhaps the productive thing to do next is simply enjoy your afternoon.
In this episode:
- Why our understanding of productivity comes from measuring industrial output
- Why knowledge and relationship-based work resist simple measures of productivity
- The difference between being busy, efficient, effective, and genuinely productive
- Why productivity systems can become another sophisticated form of procrastination
- Parkinson's Law and the peculiar productivity superpower of the day before a holiday
- Why AI can save enormous amounts of time or give us exciting new ways to waste it
- The invisible value of thinking, deciding, resting, listening, and saying no
- Why productivity often comes down to deciding what actually matters
- How daily non-negotiables can protect your attention from everything else competing for it
- What you might do with your time if you stopped treating every spare hour as additional productive capacity
The question isn't necessarily how can I be more productive?
It might be: what deserves my attention today?
And once the meaningful work is done, you're allowed to be done.
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