[A rather reflective post, this Diwali week!]
Beyond the usual time management tips and hacks, of instilling atomic habits, and of getting things done – the world of James Clear, Tiago Forte and David Allen and similar purveyors of ‘smart productivity’ advice – lies the more rarified world of ‘wisdom productivity’. This is the world of Oliver Burkeman and ‘Four Thousand Weeks’, of Celeste Hadlee and ‘Do Nothing’. Am sure there are other names too.
Smart productivity asks how you can be better, faster, and do more. It profers advice such as calendaring instead of to-do lists, eat the frog, removing notifications / reducing distractions, scheduling time for deep work, using templated reply lists etc. Good examples of such content include this one on calendaring (not to do lists) by Devi Parikh, and this on time management techniques by Lenny Rachitsky.
Wisdom productivity operates above the actual actions of becoming productive, and instead discusses the costs and consequences of trying to be productive all the time. It asks if you really need to do all of that in all this time. Life is short, and there will always be more you can do and not enough time. So choose – and what you choose becomes the richer and more meaningful because you have rejected many alternatives – and enjoy what you chose.
Smart productivity is about how you can win / play better. Wisdom productivity asks where should you play, if at all.
Smart productivity is about me creating Alfred snippets, so I can respond to 20 mails in 10-15 mins. Wisdom productivity is my colleague (who will go unnamed) understanding that responding fast to emails will only get you more mails back, and instead chosing to reply to the few that matter or none:)
The futility of smart productivity
Smart productivity seems more correct but in the long run it can cause stress and anxiety as ypu struggle to keep up at it. The reward for good work is more work and to the efficient, more work will find its way to you. It is an unending treadmill.
Wisdom productivity on the surface can seem lazy, or rude, e.g., lack of responses or curt, cold ‘Sorry, I cant help’ mails. The best practitioners of wisdom productivity anticipate this and lay down ground rules of response, that you appreciate the email, but that you will not be able to respond to all mails or inbounds.
I realise the above binary is simplistic, and there is lot of good smart productivity advice that is actually wisdom productivity effectively – taking on fewer things as doing them well e.g., Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity is about being taking on fewer things, and doing them well. A lot of good smart productivity advice is about limiting the stuff you take on and focusing on the ones that matter. So what is the difference?
I suppose wisdom productivity acknowledges the futility of optimising / picking the best thing to work on. It says there is no such things as best usually, and it is fine for you to pick a few that you like doing / have some ability to do well and do those, and not feel guilty about having picked some, which may not be the most optimal. As Oliver Burkeman puts it our finite life makes our choices meaningful & enjoyable. If we had unlimited choices or repetitions, then each of our actions wouldn’t be enjoyable. He says, the fact that we could have chosen a different option, bestows a meaning or the choice you made; he describes this as the joy of missing out.
The hierarchy of productivity
We start our lives feeling immortal, and that death is non-existent, somewhere far away. Time is infinite, and you dont think consciously about how to plan it. Then you rise in your career, you now have a family, and now there is always more things to do, and less time. This is where smart productivity comes in handy. You can stuff in more, do things faster, and so on. But the treadmill having started, never seems to slow down. It only gets faster.
At some point you realise that time is finite. People you know and loved, die. Whatever you do, there is a time that will come when you too will not exist. What is more, time seems to be rushing faster and faster as you age. And whatever you do, it doesn’t seem to be enough. This is when you start acknowledging the futility of smart productivity. It is time then to embrace wisdom productivity. There will never be enough time to do all that you want to do, and whatever you chose, is important because you have chosen it. So enjoy it and be happy you got to chose it.
Each of us moves through this hierarchy of productivity, and I suppose it is my turn now to embrace wisdom productivity.