Productivity Hack: Just Stop
Want to drive impact in your workplace, team, family, and personal life? Stop trying to be productive.
Our lives and bookshelves are full of productivity hacks, methods, and coaches. The emphasis is the same: Produce more!
Productivity isn't bad, but it's a by-product. It's like trying to get a watermelon by drinking water. It's not the worst thing to happen, but it's rarely the best.
Being productive assumes that the output will be of value (and sometimes it is!), yet that assumption part is dangerous. You can produce a metric ton of the wrong thing while failing to create value.
This productivity mindset is a carryover from the industrial age when things were deemed ideal when the assembly line was producing. In that specific context, the desire for productivity still holds significant weight.
But you and I are not assembly lines. Each moment, we must decide what's most important, how to take action, and then do exactly that—take action. This process of deciding and doing is more akin to the "everyone a CEO" line of thinking than an assembly line.
So what's the answer—what's the better aim? Effectiveness.
We mustn't keep asking ourselves, "What needs to be done?" but rather, "What's best next?" There is only one of you who can do only one thing at a time.
There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
All effective people are highly productive, but not all productive people are highly effective.
Aim to be effective in the one thing you're doing next, and you'll be amazed at your productivity in what matters most.