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The Anti-Productivity Manifesto

• pitched 4y ago
  I think it’s a lot easier to become productive and efficient at work than it is at home (or generally tasks for yourself). Because of the structures built to support it only usually end up in one environment. That imbalance is what I think leads to burnout. But saying that the solution to productivity is… productivity… is just as bad as telling people to meditate instead of taking time off work. Probably true! But very unhelpful.
  • SMAAART 4y ago
    I disagree. In our private life complexity is the enemy. Living a simple, minimalist or quasi-minimalist life, devoid from consumerism can increase one's quality of life by an order of magnitude.
    • Godel_unicode 4y ago
      Maybe for you, but that sounds like hell. We shouldn’t be monks whenever we’re off the clock, what’s the point?
      • saulpw 4y ago
        To smell the ocean To kiss your lover To play with your dog To ponder the stars To reflect on what is the point This is the opposite of hell.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • Godel_unicode 4y ago
          Maybe for you.
          • saulpw 4y ago
            For me and all the sages from antiquity to present day and everyone I know who has been truly happy. If these things seem like hell to you, you might want to consider why..
            • Godel_unicode 4y ago
              That is such a hilarious oversimplification and overstatement of the “sages from antiquity” that I can only respond that you should go and actually read some of them. The balance and give and take will be surprising and a good use of your time. Life is about doing things, if all you do is think about things you’re broken.
              • saulpw 4y ago
                If you're up for it, let's have a face-to-face videochat and talk about it! Email is in my bio.
                • Godel_unicode 4y ago
                  I’m not really looking for clients at the moment, and that’s also something you should try to tackle in person. That said, I don’t think you need my help, just try doing things. It might be uncomfortable at first but you’ll get there.
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      Minimalist is not the opposite of complexity. Really, people working on software should be deeply aware of that. You can have both or neither. And if you go radically optimizing for one, you will certainly get the unwanted extreme of the other (because well, that's what "radical" means).
      • WallyFunk 4y ago
        > Minimalist is not the opposite of complexity Simple living actually works. I've tried it. Complexity is not your friend. But that doesn't mean I avoid complexity at all costs. After all I'm typing this on a computer which is the most complex possession I have.
    • ChildOfChaos 4y ago
      I agree that it is complexity that is the enemy. It's not all about being a minimalist though. The issue is in work, there are many things already decided by other people, you are just the cog in the machine making choices in your own lane, after work, in your own life, you are responsible for everything and you have to decide, those decisions are complex and energy draining and you have to make them constantly, your time is limited, so you can only choose to do a few things, but how do you know what is best and even worse you usually always don't estimate the time that is required at all.
• quelsolaar 4y ago
  What if i like work? I like getting things done and the fact that there is infinite work is an opportunity to me. I 100% respect anyone who have other interests, but I like how the work I do have an impact and I want to maximize that impact. Choosing to not engage is a perfectly fine choice, but if one makes that choice one should be aware that one will not have the same impact.
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Do you like work when someone else decides everything you work on and the impact you’re maximizing is the surplus they take from you? What I described is nearly all work as it exists today. I don’t think most people drown from sipping water
    • youngNed 4y ago
      -- edit, parent post has been edited to be less confrontational making my post somewhat redundant.
      • waboremo 4y ago
        Unnecessary hyperbole. Here's what's happening: Article title: Not all water is good for you Person A: What if I like water? I enjoy drinking it Person B: Water in all contexts isn't great, for example you can drown. So what qualities about water do you specifically like? You see how it's less absurd? Hopefully that's made clear now. For future reference, turning everything into exaggerated hyperbole is only going to keep you contained in your isolated bubbles online and make you all the more sensitive to any sort of pushback/disagreement/criticism.
        • bckr 4y ago
          Agreed, but I think that just removing the all caps would make this a good little sarcastic comment.
  • klabb3 4y ago
    This makes it a hobby, no? A bit unusual, but congrats!
• tamsaraas 4y ago
  most if not all issues related to "productivity" related to burn-out & depression. Period.
  • goodpoint 4y ago
    And guess what creates burnout and depression? The culture of hyperproductivity and hustle. Surprise.
    • convolvatron 4y ago
      for me burnout and depression stems from not having anything useful to do because of lack of an appropriate work context.
      • CapstanRoller 4y ago
        You're both right. Much despair stems from being assigned an infinite quantity of meaningless toil.
• black_13 4y ago
  [dead]
• Claude_Shannon 4y ago
  While I get the sentiment behind this, I feel in reality it's more insidious. It teaches you to be content with mediocrity, with failure. It will make you lazy and there will be others who won't fall into the trap.
  • hammock 4y ago
    There is an arc to life. Life has phases. There are phases where building productivity makes the most sense, as results have time, runway to compound. Then there are later phases where priorities shift
  • marniewebb 4y ago
    I get this worry. I didn’t read it this way though. I read it as being more about being conscious in choosing how to spend you time and not assuming that productivity leads to open amounts of person or quality time. I am lucky; I love the work I do and there is an overlap with what I do as a “hobby.” The place I find myself in this trap is that often the places I am most “productive” are not the places I can do the highest value work, which tends to be slower and harder.
    • Claude_Shannon 4y ago
      I reread what I wrote and I spoke to rashly; I apologise for that, especially the latest fragment. But still I can't shake that feeling that perhaps what this does is just teaching yourself to be content with mediocrity and not in the good sense.
      • 8note 4y ago
        Optimizing yourself into answering emails instead of building stuff is pigeonholing yourself into mediocrity. Being more productive does not necessarily make you better at things, and the article really argues that increasing your productivity on the wrong things negatively impacts your productivity on the right things.
  • frollo 4y ago
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  The article (and maybe the book) has a nice message, I guess, but... this is advice for people whose fundamental economic needs are secure and already taken care of. The vast majority of people on the planet are forced to be "productive" for most of the day so they can just have a few short moments at the end of the day or on a weekend to be "at peace with and bask at merely existing". Because if they didn't the alternative would be starvation of themselves or their loved ones. This article is all a very "bourgeois" perspective. There are many things us middle class people could do to cut complexity and simplify and live in the moment. But the origin of "the hustle" is frankly just the material reality of every day existence. It shouldn't really be a surprise that after people get past the brute force problems of not-starving, they run around pushing with the same productive drive elsewhere in their lives and producing needless complexity because it's just part of the fundamental drive that stops you from starving in the first place. Also once you have kids, "striving for a future that never arrives" is frankly just part of your fundamental being. You will (hopefully) die before your kids or grandkids die. The moment you hold that child in your arms for the first time.. a huge part of you willingly and with deep love begins sacrificing a huge part of your present for a future you will never see. I love skiing -- among other activities -- because it puts me in this mental space described in this article. But I also see that pursuit of this comes with its own problematic aspects. It is actually super easy to get caught up in the "live the moment", and lose grasp of the obligations that we have to those around us, or to responsibilities that actually bring long-term satisfaction. I actually think our society has far more of a problem with people pursuing self-satisfying personal fulfillment (at the expense of social responsibility) than it does with people being overproductive.
  • fisf 4y ago
    This. The article alludes to Buddhism, when it comes to living in the moment. But it totally ignored the trap of hedonistic pleasure seeking that goes along with it.
  • leroy-is-here 4y ago
    People are well versed in reasons on why they choose not to live in the moment.
• xianshou 4y ago
  Sometimes it's possible to get a pretty good bead on someone's worldview from even a short excerpt. In this case, the author not only has a low internal locus of control, but seems to adopt it as a core belief. Here's the key part: "Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run." Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration. I find this fatalism both increasingly common and increasingly odious. The opposite attitude may be irritating - Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" - but I prefer to reason from agency when there's a decent chance the more empowering view is right. Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?
  • mejutoco 4y ago
    I thought the quote was from John Steinbeck https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-said-that-socialism-never-took-root-in https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-...
    • xianshou 4y ago
      Good catch, thanks
  • pretendscholar 4y ago
    Lol what would they even use to measure a million of a currency in De Tocquevilles time?
    • tiedieconderoga 4y ago
      You don't want to know. The quote is more commonly attributed to John Steinbeck, who also wrote a (somewhat embellished) memoir / #vanlife travelogue in 1962, called "Travels With Charley in Search of America".
    • 4y ago
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  I'm reminded of Joseph Heller's quote about having More: https://narendragoidani.medium.com/but-i-have-something-he-will-never-have-enough-8036d03d089b https://narendragoidani.medium.com/but-i-have-something-he-w...
  • thenerdhead 4y ago
    Funny "enough", that quote inspired me to write a book called "Enough." as a double meaning for being fed up with the world and also being satisfied with what you have. I read this story in Jack Bogle's book called "Enough". I had no idea where I came across these other words until now, but I did use them as a intro page in my book because they were so fitting at the time: Enough — What an eloquent word. Enough — What a potent word. Enough — An underused word, maybe. Thanks for sharing.
    • AlbertCory 4y ago
      You're welcome. I'd forgotten where I heard it, too, but fortunately, you can just type a quote into DDG (or Google) and the top answers usually have the source.
    • saulpw 4y ago
      Are you familiar with the Swedish word/concept "lagom"?
      • AlbertCory 4y ago
        I was going to ask, but I do now: https://utopia.org/guide/lagom/ https://utopia.org/guide/lagom/
      • thenerdhead 4y ago
        I had not. I wish I did when I was writing this book as it is a great word. I have heard of "moderation" (stoicism), "goldilocks" (fairy tales), balancing yin-yang (daoism/confucianism), middle way (buddhism), golden mean (aristotle), etc. I've heard of wabi-sabi recently which seems like a similar idea in Japan.
• mkl95 4y ago
  > All theory aside, the feeling that you’d be left behind your peers is very real. A millionaire lawyer in front of her boss still feels that she has a lot to catch up on. It's not always a feeling though. Criteria for promotion can be all over the place. We've all worked with some idiot with a fancy title. If you are not getting a fair shake, the solution is sometimes to run away. But you will usually be stuck for emotional or professional reasons (you don't want another short stint in your CV, you don't have the energy to go through a big tech hiring process, etc.) This kind of contradiction inevitably leads to alienation, then burnout. Many workers will quiet quit instead of quitting for real, because even if they can afford not to work for a while, they still rely on income to progress towards some goal such as buying some property, paying off their student loan, etc. I have been a quiet quitter before it was a term, but what worked for me was actually the opposite. Every time I have doubled down on some side project with the goal of getting a better gig, it has worked out. I make it clear to my manager I hate some aspects of my work so I would rather focus on others, and it's up to them to make it work. I would rather focus on the right productivity than being anti-productive.
  • coldtea 4y ago
    >It's not always a feeling though. Criteria for promotion can be all over the place. We've all worked with some idiot with a fancy title. And often we were that idiot for others. It's a matter of perspective as everybody tends to think that their farts dont stink
• Aunche 4y ago
  I think the internet likes to treat basic human instinct as something profound. At least in the western world, I suspect that at most 1% of people actually over-optimize on productivity. This is different from the 9% of people who try too hard for their employer, which is often it's own form of laziness of sticking with what you're comfortable with.
• ouid 4y ago
  Why is dying without regrets the de facto most important thing? You don't take your regrets with you either. If you want to care about something, at least pick something that will last longer than you will.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Indeed... If I don't -- at least temporarily -- regret some things it likely means I didn't put much on the line. Two kinds of regret: 1. Regret making a mistake. Making mistakes is part of existence and learning. Regret is a natural consequence of messing things up. Moving on from the regret is also part of the learning. 2. Regret for losing something we love, or for loving something we can't have. This can be problematic, if not framed correctly. But also something we learn to move beyond. But it's also, again, part of the richness of a life well lived -- to make or seek attachments and feel regret when they're lost and to constantly re-evaluate. We lost my mother in law to cancer 11 years ago. I often feel regret for not making better moments with her before it ended, and so on. That regret is just part of the nature of having love and attachment in my life. Giving it up would make me a poorer person. We will potentially all leave this world with a sense of loss or regret. If I didn't, I would worry about what kind of dissociated detachment I was carrying with me. I don't know, maybe I will live a rich full life and die after I'm just tired of living, with no sense of loss? I'm an organism that feels both joy and suffering. I try to minimize the latter in favour of the former. But there's no formula to avoiding suffering that doesn't involve joyless detachment. It requires intellectual and emotional effort to analyze and deal with every situation. That's just part of the story.
  • alexp 4y ago
    and why is leaving something that will last so important? You don’t take your legacy with you either, no?
    • CatWChainsaw 4y ago
      Look upon ouid's works, ye mighty, and despair.
  • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
• mkoubaa 4y ago
  This seems to be targeted specifically at people who are extrinsically motivated and do not prioritize family. In my humble opinion that's the worst quadrant of those two variables. But apparently, with how prescient this seems to most commenters, many people actually inhabit that quadrant. Could that really be so?
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  > The message seems old. The entire self-help industry revolves around saying variations of it. Stay in the present. Enjoy the moment. Seize the day. Plenty of old books too: Art of War - Choose the right battles to fight. Meditations - Live in the present moment and focus on what you can control. Tao Te Ching - Live in harmony with the natural world. The Bhagavad Gita - Find meaning in your actions even in the face of uncertainty. The Bible - Make the most of your time on earth. > Time is a series of nows. In that sense, the future never arrives. It's a good perspective. Especially if you make the most of the present each day. But if you have nothing to look forward to, how can you really make the most of each day? That's the basic argument here. Many philosophers believed you need to have a strong vision to make the most of your life. That can be found through one's acceptance of mortality/finitude/purpose/morals/desires/suffering/etc.
  • phkahler 4y ago
    >> Many philosophers believed you need to have a strong vision to make the most of your life. I'd say it's not to make the most of your life, but to make something of it. Having goals or purpose can be separate from the competition for "most". I also find that goals or principles help to make decisions when a course is not clear. Like a tie breaker.
    • thenerdhead 4y ago
      There's nuance for sure. Most - Maximize your personal fulfillment and happiness. Something - Maximize your external achievements and recognition by others. I personally don't care to make "something" out of my life. I want to make the "most" of it.
  • all2 4y ago
    Your summary of the Bible is off base. If you're summarizing the book of Ecclesiastes, you're almost there. Solomon provides a succinct description of the point of the book. Ecc 8:15 15So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his fntoils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun. But also Ecc 11:8-9 8Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility. 9¶Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the fnimpulses of your heart and the fndesires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. As for the Bible, I'll direct you to the late theologian Chuck Missler.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Basically, I'm there. I'm really productive. So productive, in fact, that I have to slow down for the rest of the team. a lot. Rather than be frustrated by it, I use the extra time to do things like dig out a flowerbed for my wife (ow), or catch up on streaming stuff. But I really like coding, and tend to spend free time coding; even though I don't have to. It makes a huge difference, not having someone breathing down my neck, basically saying "Shut up, bitch. Just go out and make me money!" I don't have a ton of money, but I have enough. I live frugally (many folks here, would have contempt for my level of living), I can afford good development systems (my toys), and I have a great deal of social interaction.
  • mewpmewp2 4y ago
    Why do you have to slow down?
    • 8note 4y ago
      Bus factor and deployment safety. It takes time for the rest of your team to stay up to date on what you are doing, and you don't want to release too many changes at once, so it's faster to pinpoint which one has an error
    • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      Because I’m working with a designer, who is working part-time, and have to wait for his renderings. He gets pissed off, if I guess. I don’t want to have to undo a bunch of work, if I guessed wrong.
  • navierstokess 4y ago
    >I'm really productive. So productive, in fact, that I have to slow down for the rest of the team. a lot. Please teach us mere mortals how to be as productive as you are.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      > Please teach us mere mortals how to be as productive as you are. You … um … do realize that this is a professional forum, right? I’d suggest that randomly insulting folks would be … unwise. I may not be an important person to your career, but there’s a lot of folks that probably are, here, and they may be watching.
• ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  I love this book. I read it not long after it came out. The authors newsletter can be found on his website (Oliver burkeman), is also a great read. I love the basic productivity advice that I believe comes from Jung that he quotes, which is basically, figure out something worthwhile to do, go do it and then figure out the next worthwhile thing to do, complete forever. Something simple about that. Jung points out that this is also a natural way of being, in that sense you are living from your true sense of self as you are deciding what is important moment to moment and actually living your life, rather than trying to make it fit some predetermined idea of what you think it should be. I'm trying to get more into this mode of thinking / being.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• coxomb 4y ago
  > In an ideal world, such efficient folks like yourself would invest a few hours per day working hard, but then spend the rest of the day in a lazy glory I detest laziness. There's only so much 'Netflix and Chill' a person can do, and after lazing around, I actually feel drained, rather than energized. You would think that laziness gives you energy, but it saps it instead. I guess this is because we're all human in the end, wired to be productive and working on at least one problem.
  • StrawWoman 4y ago
    YES. I experience the same depletion of energy during “rest”. In fact, lots of down time without productivity (doesn’t have to be work!) leads me to depression. Going back to school and taking a single class has made me feel productive and filled me with pride.. with thought it’s not too impressive. Watching Netflix for hours, or browsing my phone, leads me to a bad outlook of myself and the world.
  • EngManagerIsMe 4y ago
    I think the author and you might have different understandings of "lazy". If I pursue a hobby for an afternoon with no financial upside (say, building model kits or painting) I might consider that a "lazy Sunday". I was productive, insofar as I pursued an interest, but I was not productive in the "producing salable work". I think there's a universe where lazy can mean different things for different people. For some that's lying on the couch, others might read or write or pursue art and music.
    • mewpmewp2 4y ago
      That I would definitely not call a lazy Sunday...
• cerradokids 4y ago
  It's fun being productive, being exceptional, being really good at what you do. It's the most fun I have in life, and I have done all sort of things (including drugs). I'm sorry the author doesn't have this worth living for, fulfilling feeling.
• happytiger 4y ago
  You can’t buy a fishing boat with the proceeds of a fishing pole anymore, however.
• noveltyaccount 4y ago
  The phrase that stuck with me from that book: tomorrow in not guaranteed. I'm in my forties and have watched a few friends die slowly from cancer, and others die suddenly in car crashes. During COVID, working from home in my dimly-lit basement during perpetual grey days, doing my bureaucratic middle management job, I kept thinking: I can't die like this. My wife and I both quit our jobs and are on a sabbatical. It's glorious. Every day is sunny. Now I'm mid deep contemplation about my next job and how I can find something that motivates me and fills me with happiness even if it's for less money. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Don't forget to act on that, everyone.
  • xgbi 4y ago
    Candid question: how do you finance your sabbatical ? I feel like a lot of people (I'm in there) are dreaming for exactly what your are living right now, but won't EVER be in the position to do it. I am 36 with about 14 years of software engineering, and I need LOTS_OF_MONEY per month just to finance my mortgage, the school of my children and the basic living expenses that rose about 50% in the last year due to energy and inflation. If my wife and I quit for 3 month, we are out of our saved money and will be losing the house.
    • user8501 4y ago
      Not OP, but I’ll tell you how my wife and I were able to take a year long sabbatical. I had some stock options for the company I worked for, which had gone public during my employment, and buying and selling it all provided enough to live very comfortably off of for about a year for the two of us.
      • carlivar 4y ago
        The key part seems to be not having kids. For me, I feel like I need to keep pushing at least until they are launched off to college.
    • noveltyaccount 4y ago
      Mostly luck* that my wife and I worked for a company that compensated largely in stock, and we worked there (and both got promoted) during a period of strong stock performance. We also planned our expenses around one base salary. So about 1/4 of gross income covered mortgage, child care (one kid), etc. We live way beneath our means. The rest (after taxes) went into index funds and a few lucky investments. We're at the "FU money" stage of wealth, and we'll go back to work to ensure we get to "very comfortably retired" stage. *I'd like to take credit for being so brilliant as to land the job at said company, and maybe I should take some credit for that, but honestly it's mostly good luck.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• fasterik 4y ago
  >If you must work hard and be efficient, consciously pick that work With this one sentence, the whole dichotomy proposed by the article falls apart. It all depends on what gives your life meaning and what your goals are. If you primarily derive meaning from having experiences with friends and family, then it absolutely makes sense to devalue productivity. If you primarily derive meaning from creating artifacts that will survive for a long time and provide benefit to humanity, then it's hard to see why you shouldn't optimize for productivity. A lot of the anti-work, anti-productivity discourse seems to revolve around this assumption that some things are more meaningful than others independent of individual preferences. If people really value competence in a certain domain and "getting ahead" is important to them, what ground is there to stand on to say that they're wrong?
  • potatoman22 4y ago
    I interpreted the book to be about living intentionally. I don't think the author would say advancing in a field you're passionate about is a bad thing.
    • fasterik 4y ago
      I haven't read the book, but the article gave me that impression. Maybe I define productivity differently than they do.
  • 8note 4y ago
    > If you primarily derive meaning from creating artifacts that will survive for a long time and provide benefit to humanity, then it's hard to see why you shouldn't optimize for productivity. You are still devaluing productivity because this is actually an agility problem. Optimizing for productivity doesn't necessarily make you any progress towards creating long lasting artifacts, and instead will draw you into doing infinite work before making any progress on those artifacts The key is to be agile and ensure that your productivity furthers the things you care about. Your speed towards irrelevant items is irrelevant, but there's an infinite number of irrelevant tasks to complete.
    • 4y ago
• raarts 4y ago
  All my life I've liked working, learning, doing things, getting stuff done. I really like to make myself useful. I'm also the proverbial guy who, if left in the woods with an axe, will just start chopping trees and build something. Efficiency is good for me. I can do more.
• rnmp 4y ago
  Shameless plug but I wrote an app[1] with the same idea of anti-productivity in mind. Having read the book, the idea of 4000 weeks in your life can be scary but also inspiring. [1]: https://www.bleep.is/blog/why-i-made-an-anti-productivity-app https://www.bleep.is/blog/why-i-made-an-anti-productivity-ap...
• vuciv1 4y ago
  Just finished reading this insightful article, and it resonates with my recent experience backpacking through Chile. I've been amazed by the slower pace of life here, where people seem to prioritize relationships, leisure, and hobbies over chasing career goals and constantly striving for efficiency. It's refreshing to see communities that embrace the idea of enjoying the present moment rather than being fixated on a future that never really arrives. As someone in the tech industry, it's easy to get caught up in the productivity treadmill, trying to maximize every moment of our finite lives. But this article is a stark reminder that there's more to life than just work and chasing success. Instead of focusing solely on efficiency, we should actively choose what truly matters to us, like personal connections, health, and happiness. Chile has taught me that embracing a slower pace and appreciating the present can lead to a more fulfilling and content life. It's a lesson we can all benefit from, especially in our fast-paced, efficiency-obsessed world. Let's not forget that life is a series of choices, and it's up to us to prioritize what truly matters.
• zanderz 4y ago
  Some consider the emphasis on hard work and striving for its own sake to be less a default or inevitable value as an arbitrary confluence of history and Protestant/Calvinist doctrine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic One of Max Weber's theories is that working ever harder for more material gain once basic needs are met is not a universal part of human nature but more a cultural artifact of a certain time and place. Not a message usually impressed upon us these days.