The Anti-Productivity Manifesto Part 5/5
How to let go of your invisible procrastination compulsion and create real momentum in your life.
(Read part 1 here… Virtual Reality
What we’ve covered so far:
Forget ‘Productivity’ –
Focus on Time Enrichment.
Cultivate quality of life, instead of preoccupation. Life has quality when we’re:
- Fully present with what we’re doing
- Doing something meaningful.
Productivity is just DOING (often mindless things)
Time Enrichment is balancing BEING (present and focused) and DOING (the most important things)
Time is something you can INHABIT (metaphorically step in to) by eliminating superfluous distractions and giving yourself the space to focus.
This makes it into Quality time (rather than having fractionated attention split between distractions)
Quality of time = Quality of life
Inhabiting your time is the way to immerse yourself in your own life
The main question is always:
What am I giving my focus to right now?
The Central Tenet = Priority
Productivity advice understates the most vital element – Priority.
PRIORITY =
‘What’s the most important thing now?’We’ve all heard this.
But it’s a question that needs to be asked again and again.
Priority unlocks our ability to see through the noise, find the most vital activity, and do that.
Productivity lore doles out false promises that we’ll get our priorities done.
Yet the advice runs contrary to achieving it.
Priority has to come first – or not at all. It’s what the word means.
Everything has to be channeled through the lens of priority.
The main difference with this approach:
It’s top-down, rather than bottom-up.
Top-Down vs Bottom-Up
Bottom-up = Efficiency (Productivity)
Optimising systems and processes to get ‘everything’ done.
This cultivates the ‘flitting’ mindset, the ‘so many things undone’ mindset.
It sabotages your will to make real progress.
Priority gets brushed under the rug in the name of efficiency.
Efficiency promotes the glorious illusion that we’re omnipotent beings – that if we have the right system we can get absolutely everything done.
Top-down = Effectiveness (Time Enrichment)
We have a vision of where we’re going.
We know the consistent daily keystone action we need to take to get there.
We devote time to that first – We engage with it even if progress is slow and inefficient.
We don’t get involved with small tasks or systems until after we’ve done that.
We show up everyday and do the thing – sacrificing the smug (false) feeling that everything is under control.
eg if you want to write a book – you spend x hours writing.
You do nothing else until that’s done.
You ‘waste’ time in service of the real-life challenge.
You yourself to be inefficient for the sake of being effective in the long-run.
You have to replace the addictive compulsion of getting lost in small tasks with an obsession on one major activity.
It’s like the marshmallow test.
You have to delay the gratifying feeling of accomplishment.
You’re not going to tick anything off your to-do list.
Instead you’re going to grapple with difficult work that’s not going to reward you in the short-term.
It’s the only way to do amazing things in the long-term.
Productivity is obsessed with the question of how to wield tasks
Our game is to stop thinking through the lens of tasks
Having a better life (by focusing on the important things) is about wielding time, not tasks
It doesn’t mean that you can only focus on one thing in any given period of your life.
But you can only focus on one thing in any given timeblock in your day.
You can still write a book in the morning and learn Italian in the evening.
But you can’t do both at the same time.
And you have to acknowledge that the more projects you take on, the more you’re reducing your effectiveness.
The more channelled your effort is the more powerful it is.
Deciding where that effort goes – comes down to priority…
Priority = Confront what’s truly important
Priority is asking what’s the most effective thing you can be doing.
‘What’s truly important now?’.
Let the meaningless minutiae melt away.
You might not get the right answer – but you find out by doing not thinking.
Often the answer is obvious though…
If you want to write a book you have to sit down and write everyday.
Filter your actions through what’s vital.
Break down the goal into 1-3 consistent daily actions that are essential to get you there.
Imagine you’re a hunter, stalking a deer in the forest… there’s many trees, don’t get lost amidst them – follow the deer tracks.
At the end of that trail you’ll find the thing that nourishes you.
Being effective is the same thing – only you’re not hunting a deer.
What you’re tracking down is your own sense of satisfaction.
Playing the long-term game with the work that’s important to you is the path to that satisfaction.
Spending your time doing small meaningless tasks leads you into the thicket.
You’re off the trail, scratched up by brambles, deeply unsatisfied.
Priority keeps you on the trail.
In the military they have one mission objective at a time.
One over-riding aim.
Stakes are high.
Troops are in danger.
A lot of attention goes into not wasting time, attention, or resources on superfluous things.
They don’t go out and try to do seven things at once.
They don’t try to just ‘get stuff done’ to gratify a false feeling of making progress.
Think about successful musicians:
Could they get to that level without spending their time immersed in music, practicing everyday, honing melodies, dreaming about songs?
How much time are they spending optimising their to-do list?
Total immersion in an activity.
It’s the way to make massive progress over the long-run AND also find the joy in what you’re doing.
Step In vs Step Out
Find the priority by figuring out the most important activity.
Then step IN to that activity. Iterate, and re-assess as you go.
Whereas productivity is always about stepping OUT:
– Trying to see things from a higher-level bird’s eye view
– Trying to look ahead to find the most optimal path
– Over-analysing a situation based on information rather than experience
Foresight is vital to an extent…
But we have a small scope for how far and how accurately we can predict – we have to learn as we DO.
Productivity promotes thinking over doing.
It’s a compulsive habit because our mind wants to think that it has power over the future.
The mind wants to think that it can solve all the problems before they appear, reaching this impossible state of certainty.
Yet it’s actions NOT thoughts that boldly step us forward.
Moving ahead into the unknown uncertain unchartered future – that’s where the power is.
You’re tracking the deer through the forest –
every so often you can stand up and look around –
but if you stand-still trying to map out the entire forest –
the deer runs off.
You’re left with nothing, and you have to find another trail to start again.
Decide the priority.
Do that.
Reassess as you go (not as you’re stopped from a standstill)
The question:
What’s important now?
Ask it everyday.
Take it and run with it.
That’s how you begin to build real momentum in your life.
This is part 5 of the 5-part Anti-Productivity Manifesto.
How to let go of your invisible procrastination compulsion and create real momentum in your life.
Read the Summary here…
Time Enrichment