Does productivity make us more productive or more distracted?
People obsessed with improving their productivity are striving to do more in less time. They want to maximize efficiency. And so they turn to tools, tips, and tricks - productivity 'hacks' - to find literal shortcuts towards this goal.
For a handful of people, this works. But for the vast majority, these hacks are mere distractions; avoidant behaviours designed to keep us from doing the hard thing.
As productivity guru de jour Tiago Forte recently said:
Distraction is the 500-pound elephant in the room. If you haven't figured that out and mastered that, no productivity tip or technique or framework is going to make any difference whatsoever. It's the stepping stone to even being able to even have the space to think about your productivity.
You see, being more productive - doing more work in less time - is actually quite simple, it's just not easy. It's simple because it simply requires sitting down and maintaining laser-sharp focus on the task at hand for a longer period of time. It's not easy because it requires sitting down and maintaining laser-sharp focus on the task at hand for a longer period of time.
For most people, concentration doesn't come naturally. Sure, we can pay attention to something superficial for a few minutes - but when it comes to 30 or 60 or 120 minutes on something meaningful and challenging, that's when things change. It becomes cognitively demanding. It makes us uncomfortable. It's hard.
And this is when we turn to productivity hacks.
We think because it's hard that we're just not doing it right or that we're not cut out for it or that we need a shortcut.
And this is where most people end up falling into the productivity hamster wheel. Because a hack is the last 10% of the solution. The first 90% is doing the work. It's learning how to concentrate on a hard problem for longer and longer periods of time.
It's confronting your own psychological barriers.
It's an internal battle, not an external one.
It's not airplane mode. It's you.
Less productivity, more attentioneering.
