I Will Participate, But Not As Asked: Why Productivity Isn’t Productive

On the cusp of the year 2019, I made a resolution. In the new year, I was going to slow down and prioritize rest. I was literally and figuratively tired of running myself ragged with all my commitments, classes, social outings, and anything else that happened to command my attention. I had just completed my first semester of college, and already I was bored of everyone’s Instagram story posts of them studying, staying up late, and emphasizing “doing things.” I internally rolled my eyes when people would use the words “hustle” and “grind” without a hint of irony. Students would tout their packed schedules; a block of time was set aside for every single task.

It certainly made me feel like I wasn’t being a productive member of society. As a freshman who was a full time student and full time dancer in the Nashville Ballet Professional Training Division, I would leave my dorm for my 8 am classes (let’s face it, at around 7:58 am) and wouldn’t return until 8:30 or 9 pm every night after dance. After that, I would eat dinner, do homework, maybe watch an episode of a show or read a chapter of a book, rinse, and repeat. I didn’t have aesthetic pictures of me sprinting to the parking garage or sweating my ass off in rehearsal to post with the caption “Such a productive day! I <3 working out!” If anything, I took one look at any nonessential homework and threw it in my backpack to worry about whenever it was time to actually turn it in. Tests were studied for the night before; group projects were done over text, as I never had time to meet with anyone. Thus was my chaotic existence, and still is.

So why did I feel like I wasn’t a functioning member of society? I was just as busy, if not more, than half the students at my school. I certainly spent more time getting fit (6 hours every day at the studio). I also finished my first semester on the Dean’s List. I was doing all the things I should have been doing. But I felt terrible. I realized that I never allocated time for myself. Looking around, no one was adding their restful days to their feeds. If any of the students I knew or followed ever took a spare moment, it was almost certainly a 30 minute period packaged neatly into their schedule; just enough time to sit down for a bit, but not too much time so as to waste a spare moment in which they could be productive.

I had several friends who embodied this. They were constantly studying, hanging out with friends, doing homework, or planning something. They became anxious whenever they felt like they weren’t doing anything productive. This always rubbed me the wrong way. How was lying in bed reading or spending a Saturday watching a movie after sleeping in until 11 wrong if you had rushed around all week? How else could one recharge? Were we supposed to embrace burnout? The conflicting attitudes of those around me and the way I was viewing the detrimental effects of hyper-productivity felt dissonant to me. I discovered that you had to reprogram your thoughts away from the concept of “wasted time.” How can time be wasted when it is spent in creative reflection, mental repose, or much needed physical rest? The truth is that it’s not.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well in your classes and have a social life. I certainly want those things for myself. But the detriment comes when you stop allowing yourself to breathe, when you believe that to be of value in our society, you must be optimizing yourself at all times.

Jenny Odell writes in her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy that, “Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.” This puts into words the reason I made that resolution. At first, it seemed strange to me that I, of all people, would write this down on the page, but in the past year it blossomed into a whole new life philosophy for me. Actively prioritizing my own rest, indulging my love for books, movies, and good television, allowing myself to say no, and simply spending time with myself has fostered a positive change that has led to self-love and acceptance, deeper friendships, and an ability to step outside of myself. Realizing when I need to be alone has helped me to enjoy the time I spend with my friends more, and letting myself enjoy my artistic passions has led a more dormant creative side to bloom. Slowing down was exactly what I needed to enrich the areas of my life I deeply cared about. Now, the thought of “doing things” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I make time for my commitments and schoolwork, but I approach them with a much more relaxed attitude, pulling out the things I love about them and holding onto those.

I was listening to a podcast recently with Greta Gerwig, because of course, and I was surprised when she started talking about this topic. Citing the thoughts of playwright Annie Baker, she said, “There’s such an addiction to productivity, that sometimes you miss these moments where what looks like being lazy or a fallow period or like you haven’t done anything, a lot of important work can get done there when it doesn’t look like anything is happening on the surface. And I think sometimes those incubation periods… you had stored up a lot.” These words struck me, and I think they perfectly sum up the issues that a laser-focus on productivity can lead to. Constant focus on productive output as the highest form of time-spending excludes the space needed for creation and discovery. If our emphasis becomes on the outward appearance of work being done, we lose the time to explore the deep inner work that actually needs attention. We lose the time to discover our innermost selves and the multitudes we contain apart from what is tangible. Creativity flourishes when we stop to process and just let ourselves be, without feeling the need to keep tallies of our production.