{"id":1310,"date":"2020-04-07T13:29:38","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T03:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/?post_type=articles&p=170987"},"modified":"2020-11-29T22:34:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T22:34:26","slug":"now-is-not-the-time-to-maximise-our-productivity","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/now-is-not-the-time-to-maximise-our-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Now Is Not The Time To Maximize Our Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I sat next to a man on a plane who did absolutely nothing for the duration of the flight.\u00a0 I mean it \u2013 he didn\u2019t watch a movie, didn\u2019t thumb through a book, didn\u2019t aimlessly scroll through photos of the trip he\u2019d just been on.\u00a0 He stared straight ahead, silent and vaguely peaceful. \u00a0To say that we were the classic odd couple of that flight is probably unfair to this man; I can see why he wouldn\u2019t want to hitch his wagon to me \u2013 I\u2019m very annoying on planes.\u00a0 I have a whole routine: pre-downloaded movies, three books jammed into the flap of the seat in front of me (because it\u2019s important to have options), various snacks forming a perimeter around my seat, a range of hydrating balms and creams (and a 2-liter water bottle, which inevitably spends the flight rolling up and down the surrounding aisles) to ward off in-flight dehydration.<\/p>\n

But in a sense, we were<\/em> the classic odd couple \u2013 where he was placid, I was excitable, manic, busy<\/em>; where he was tranquil, I was speed-eating M&Ms like it was a competition.\u00a0 After I\u2019d bumped him a few times \u2013 while adjusting my iPad to achieve an optimal movie-viewing angle, or pulling out one of many hand creams, or offering him some of my M&Ms (he declined) \u2013 we started chatting.\u00a0 I had to ask him what he was doing: \u2018Are you meditating?\u00a0 Reflecting on your trip?\u00a0 Are you thinking about what to watch?\u00a0 I know, it can be hard to decide.\u2019 He replied good-naturedly: \u2018No, just\u2026 relaxing.\u2019<\/p>\n

This made a huge impression on me, because it felt like such a rarity.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s not surprising, given the current cultural obsession with productivity.\u00a0 The idea that we can constantly work more and do more and be more has become the prevailing logic, beginning with our relationship to work.\u00a0 Erin Griffiths writes about the rise of \u2018hustle culture\u2019<\/a> in the world of work for the New York Times, observing (facetiously but with grim accuracy), \u2018I saw the greatest minds of my generation log 18-hour days \u2014 and then boast about #hustle on Instagram. When did performative workaholism become a lifestyle?\u2019<\/p>\n

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Photograph: Galina @WarmHealer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The drive to optimize every second of our time does not end with work.\u00a0 It\u2019s seeped into our private lives as well, prompting a relentless audit of the way we spend our personal time \u2013 should I be waking up half-an-hour earlier to meditate?\u00a0 Should I get into yoga?\u00a0 Should I listen to a podcast while I\u2019m on a run, so I learn something and <\/em>get my cardio in at the same time?\u00a0 No shade to these activities, which all have ample mental health benefits (and if you have the attention span to listen to a podcast while running, power to you). \u00a0What I find problematic is the constant pressure to do more with our time, to strive to achieve, relentlessly, even in our downtime.\u00a0 In a New Republic article<\/a>, Nick Martin describes the way that hustle culture infiltrates every corner of our minds and lives, describing this mindset as, \u2018the idea that every nanosecond of our lives must be commodified and pointed toward profit and self-improvement.\u2019 \u00a0This trend runs alongside the proliferation of social media, which turns private lives into performance and diffuses our attention among countless competing interests. \u00a0It coincides with the way that boredom has become anathema to our society, causing\u00a0 Andr\u00e9 Spicer, a professor of organizational behavior at City University of London, to write for the Guardian<\/a> that, \u2018in a world that values being interesting and busy, boredom can feel like a personal defect.\u2019\u00a0 And in a capitalist society, the culture of hyper-productivity can unsurprisingly manifest in the feeling that we should convert our personal time into something that reaps financial rewards.\u00a0 In a memorable article for Man Repeller, Molly Conway writes about the \u2018modern trap of turning hobbies into hustles,\u2019<\/a> \u2018we feel beholden to capitalize on the rare places where our skills and our joy intersect, we underline the idea that financial gain is the ultimate pursuit.\u2019<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as the content reminding everyone that Shakespeare wrote King Lear and Isaac Newton invented calculus during past plague-related quarantines, has done the rounds. \u00a0And then there\u2019s the parade of social media images, showing breads baking and home workouts executed and creative projects simmering along.\u00a0 With the majority of us confined to our homes, with ample time to get lost in the fuzzy haze of the scroll, these images are seemingly everywhere. <\/em>\u00a0In one sense, this is lovely \u2013 it\u2019s wonderful that so many people have found productive or meditative outlets in a completely stressful time.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a dark side, too \u2013 feeling guilty that we\u2019re not doing enough relative to everyone else, or not meeting the bizarrely ambitious benchmarks we\u2019ve set for ourselves.\u00a0 On her podcast, How to Fail,<\/em> Elizabeth Day talks about, \u2018the weird daily guilt that you haven\u2019t got down to writing that life-defining novel that now you\u2019ve got time to write, or [that] you\u2019re not homeschooling your children sufficiently.\u2019\u00a0 This guilt is the ugly other half of our tendency toward the super-humanly productive.\u00a0 When that\u2019s our normal, it becomes tempting, even in these extremely abnormal circumstances, to maintain momentum (or even to ramp it up, now that we have all this additional time<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Chris Bailey, a productivity consultant, is quoted in the New York Times<\/a> about this tendency: \u2018It\u2019s tough enough to be productive in the best of times let alone when we\u2019re in a global crisis\u2026. The idea that we have so much time available during the day now is fantastic, but these days it\u2019s the opposite of a luxury. We\u2019re home because we have to be home, and we have much less attention because we\u2019re living through so much.\u2019\u00a0 Of course, this does not apply to everyone \u2013 to frontline workers, who don\u2019t get the luxury of choice when it comes to being productive right now; or the many who have lost jobs, for whom staying busy might feel like a comfort.\u00a0 But for many of us, it\u2019s a useful reminder: with everything that\u2019s going on, it\u2019s natural to feel fatigued and anxious, to lack mental space for much more than fulfilling basic needs.\u00a0 A friend told me over the weekend that she feels like she should be watching all of the new shows everyone is talking about, but right now, all she can handle is the sweet, sedate, comfort blanket of Gilmore Girls re-runs.<\/p>\n

Given our usual obsession with productivity, slowing down or doing nothing might feel unnatural.\u00a0 But now, more than ever, it\u2019s what we need.\u00a0 This means changing our mindset about how we spend our time \u2013 focusing less on achievement and doing, and more on putting one foot in front of the other, and taking care of ourselves and others.\u00a0 It means leaning into boredom, rather than trying to escape it (not only are occasional bouts of boredom a perfectly fine alternative to constantly striving to maximize our productivity \u2013 they are actually more valuable than we realize, with studies finding that \u2018we may be at our most creative when we are bored<\/a>\u2019).\u00a0 So let\u2019s spend more time staring into space, without wondering where that will lead us.\u00a0 Let\u2019s do things for their own sake.\u00a0 Let\u2019s remember that these are bizarre times, and it\u2019s okay to just take a minute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10061,"featured_media":1311,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"\nNow Is Not The Time To Maximize Our Productivity - Grazia USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There\u2019s enough going on. 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