Productivity

Life throws us so many things to juggle in the 21st century. Out of our control, our inbox can send us another unplanned job that we don't feel like doing. Over the last decade, podcasts, self-improvement, and other business gurus have been telling us how to maximize productivity and get the most done in one day. However, we are all realizing that life is not about getting the most done but the most important things done. All of this planning and hustling has caused us to forget that life is happening now, in the present, and not in the future.

Many people are figuring out that they can get a week's work done in 1 or 2 days. Now, the previous misconception was that you could do a week's work in 2 days so that the rest of the week you could get ahead in that same area of work. But, I believe that you get that amount of work done in the first 2 days of the week so that you can fulfil other goals and priorities throughout the rest of the week. For example, I could get all my assignments done on Monday and Tuesday, so that I can practice the piano, meet up with friends, develop a new skill, and go to the gym on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. There is a variety more than work that we need to include as productivity. Productivity is not just about plain study and what we traditionally include as 'our job.' There are so many other things we could include in our routines healthily: going for a walk, reading, video gaming, cooking, meeting up with friends, events, music, dancing, sport, practicing a new skill, playing a board game.

We need a new balanced way to approach productivity, one that puts value as our priority and not a list of priorities as our value. I get more done in a day if I study for 2 hours, meet up with friends for 3 hours, go to the gym for 1 hour, and practice a new skill for 3 hours in the evening, than if I just did 9 hours of work without stopping. There is a healthy state of mind we need to reach in our 21st-century lives. The default is to spend hours and hours consuming content, then someday we watch a productivity hack video and all of a sudden we're hustling the whole day. Work becomes our definition of productivity. However, this is just advancing in one area of life. I personally would prefer to be ahead in 5 or 6 areas of life at the end of the day than way ahead in just 1 area. But in order to find what these 5 or 6 areas of life are, we need to figure out how to make meaningful goals.

A helpful guide to figuring out what we should value throughout our day is setting meaningful goals. This is where you all expect me to say 'Set SMART goals, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.' And yes, as a general rule, the clichéd answer is good. But we need to figure out why we're actually doing the goal. I am not motivated to sleep just because it's what I scheduled in my day; I am motivated to sleep because of the immense benefit it brings. This is the same for anything else in life. Many people just list out a number of goals because that's what other people would choose as their goals. But you actually have to figure out what you 'want to want.' Then we need to evaluate if we are doing things because their outcomes are something we want to want. I want to play sports to make friends and live a more health-friendly lifestyle. I want to learn languages to connect with people of other cultures. I want to listen to music to make my commute more enjoyable.

And as a final point, please do not view doing your absolute favourite thing to do as unproductive. So long as it's not detrimental to your long-term health or finances, your favourite activities can be incredibly beneficial in generating gratitude and satisfaction with your life. If that's watching a film, listening to music while commuting, or having an in-depth conversation with your friend. These all add to the beauty of living day by day. Your day is not a small piece of time in a long stretch of many years, but it is an immeasurably vivid piece of time compared to the dull tracts of the past and future.