Ampersand Answers: Productivity

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.

Mark Black 

The Question: 

How can I make sure I am productive?  

&mpersand Answers:  

We are addicted to productivity in the West. Addicted, I say, and I mean it. Productivity is over-rated. 

The reason is because we’ve made productivity a qualified value. Whatever we’re producing, it has to be lots, it has to be fast, and ideally, it has to be cheap. 

Ever seen that business diagram GOOD FAST CHEAP? You can only ever have two out of three.  

If you want your productivity good and fast, it won’t be cheap.
If you want your productivity, fast and cheap, it won’t be good.
If you want your productivity, cheap and good, it won’t be fast. 

This is why, when you find yourself focused on any one of the three, it’s time to put down your productivity for the moment. No, not forever. No, you won’t screw up your momentum. No, the progress will not stop.  

It’s time, instead, to let it go, and the fastest, cheapest, goodest way to do that is to stop, and relax.

For me, that means working a jigsaw puzzle, or reading trashy fiction. For someone else, it might be a mad scramble of competitive racket ball. Or an intense chess game. Or binge-watching anything stupid.  

It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s not productive relative to what you’re working on now. 

Football star Rosey Grier turned to fiber arts and, if the conventional wisdom is correct, ballet barre exercises, to relax after a game. 

The magic of the letting go, the relaxation, really, of your focus on your productivity is inherent. When you return to it, relaxed, filled full anew, your productivity will skyrocket. 

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