The cult of productivity is preventing you from being productive I think that focusing on being deliberate actually helps resolve a lot of the tension between presence and productivity. Being deliberate about how we spend our time is essential for being productive in the meaningful sense: for effectively working towards things that are important to you. But being deliberate doesn’t mean “getting things done” for the sake of it, or always being goal-focused. Sometimes being deliberate means consciously choosing to simply experience life without worrying about whether you’re “getting anywhere.” Above all, being deliberate forces you to be present: to keep returning to and paying attention to your experience in the moment, what you feel, and what’s most important to you. What does this mean doing in practice? A few things I’ve found particularly helpful for using my time deliberately: A relatively simple thing that worked wonders for my productivity was sitting down at the beginning of each day, writing a list of tasks I wanted to achieve, and then actually planning at what time I was going to do each of those things. I think the reason this was so effective was that it forced me to be more deliberate: I was following a plan of things I’d reflected on and chosen to do, rather than just doing whatever seemed easiest at the time. I even sometimes do this with my leisure time—sit down and write an explicit list of things I want to spend my time doing. To some people, this might seem overkill—but I find it reduces a lot of the conscious energy required to make decisions about what to do at any given moment, and means I reflect more on how I really want to be spending my time, which ultimately means I enjoy it more. Sometimes simple prompts or questions can be surprisingly effective at helping us reflect on what’s most important. Some questions I find particularly useful for helping me realize what I really want to be doing include: When I look back on the past hour, what would make me feel good about how I’ve spent it? What could I do that would make me proud of myself right now? What would the very best version of myself do right now? I use these check-in points to step back and ask: How am I feeling? Am I really motivated and engaged in what I’m doing, or am I getting distracted? Am I using my time and focus in the ways I’d like to be? Obviously, it’s impossible to be constantly asking ourselves these questions, and if we did, we’d never actually get anything done or be able to enjoy anything. The key here is narrowing and broadening our focus—deciding to focus narrowly (on a given goal or experience), and then stepping back every now and then to check in on how we’re feeling and whether we’re using our time as we’d ideally like to be. Neither productivity nor presence are goals to achieve, they are both skills to be cultivated. The ability to be fully present and pay attention to our experience allows us to reflect on what’s really important to us in a broad sense, and how we really want to be spending our time moment to moment. The ability to be productive allows us to spend our time effectively working toward those goals that are most important to us. Rather than two goals in tension with one another, productivity and presence are complementary skill sets which help us to live our lives more fully.
http://qz.com/547414/the-cult-of-productivity-is-preventing-you-from-being-productive/