Since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve noticed a lot of debate about productivity in the context of physical distancing. It seems to me like there’s some confusion from all directions about what we should consider “productive” uses of our time. This has led to a number of popular posts denouncing the idea that we should be productive with our time during lock-down. I think this is an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction.
Productivity nay-sayers seem to be that promoting the idea that productivity during the time of lockdown prioritizes performance over the immediate needs of reflection and connection. It distracts people from being present, and allows them to go around their emotional states instead of through them. It encourages continuing the rat-race during precisely the time we have an opportunity to slow down.
In many cases they’re right: I know a lot of people (including my former self) who pursue performance at the expense of awareness and acceptance. Let’s call this version “distract-and-persist productivity”; never stop doing, and do better. Unfortunately, the reaction I often see is to throw the baby out with the bath-water. If being productive necessarily drives this attitude, they want nothing to do with it. So much so that one writer suggested it’s better to be eating pasta covered in ice-cream on your couch than to be concerned with being productive during quarantine.
I think there’s a problem with this conclusion. The issue being that for many (if not most) people, relinquishing all effort involves a perpetual state of a different kind of distraction, one governed by small dopamine hits and unchecked rumination. This is the approach that can have us spending 6 hours cycling through instagram stories and checking covid-19 news updates every couple hours. Although this lifestyle might be slower and less pressured, it’s probably not an optimal path to adaptation, presence, and mental health either.
I want to suggest a different model, one that ideally conforms to the uniqueness of each person’s circumstance: Productivity is living and acting in alignment with one’s intentions.
The necessary tools for this approach are 1) to actually have intentions (have you written them down?), and 2) to actually pay attention to one’s mind and actions. In this vein, it’s compatible to have intentions that are based entirely on experience rather than output. For example for someone struggling to come to terms with lock-down, a reasonable first intention might be to accept their emotional state, and eventually to accept the situation. For someone less affected it might be savouring time with family and/or devoting more time to a project. For most people, an optimal life has some combination of pleasure and discipline, short-term and long-term, social and individual. This is a collaboration of multiple values, not an ultimatum between them.
The fundamental building block of this life-strategy is attention. In order to choose intentions that actually improve my life, I have to pay close attention to my values, desires, biases, past experiences, delusions. To align my actions to what I think will fulfill my intentions I have to pay attention to what I’m doing, where there’s friction, what feels easy, when I have energy. To actually enjoy the experience I have to pay attention to what is going on, right now. Attention is the difference between actually showing up for my life, and just being a bystander lost in thought, surprised when it’s over.
Socrates said “An unexamined life is not worth living” – I don’t know if that’s true. Something I’m pretty certain of, though, is that an examined life is one more worth living.