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Efficiency ≠ Productivity
If You Really Want Productivity, Take a Long, Hard Look at Yourself
In today’s world, we are guilty of viewing everything through a technological lens. I’ve written and length and in detail about the dangers of this lens.¹
To bring these deeper philosophical and existential insights into the every-day world, I want to discuss the productivity community. This is one I’ve been a part of for several years, and have occasionally written for with some success.²
However, I see a dangerous trend within the productivity community that is born from this technological lens, and it threatens to eviscerate any possibility of a productive life.
First, I suggest that we must consider cui bono in the context of productivity. Cui bono asks “for what good?” or “for who’s good?” This can be a profound question, and when asked properly, should elicit profound answers.
Let me give you a hypothetical example that might cover many of you:
Why do I want to be productive? Because, I want to live a better life. What does that mean? I want to have a better work/life balance, to spend more time with my wife and kids, and be successful in my work. How does productivity help me do that? It means that I work better because fewer tasks and pieces of information fall through the cracks. And it means that I work better. Perhaps this means I work with more efficiency, and perhaps I work with greater focus.
In my experience, most people’s default answer there would land on the efficiency side. “The less time I spend working on something, the more productive I’ve been/can be because I have more time for something else,” would roughly be the thought.
Now, let us bring this into the productivity community and an issue visible on Medium as much as on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. We spend far too much time on new gadgets that promise efficiency and do not increase productivity.
Every week, there’s a new app that promises to become your new productivity powerhouse. Or there’s a solid update to an already-used app that promises to seriously increase your productivity over what it was doing just a day before.
