The New Meaning of Productivity

Humans are creatures of habit, ease and social interactions. As the collective human race we have spent thousands of years working towards where we are today in terms of where we are as a highly productive and rapidly progressing society. However, for these past few months that whole system has collapsed. All our well thought out workspaces that have been highly rated, productivity indices companies pride themselves on, learning centers for students and most of all creative spaces and outlets have all be shut down. All of what we had set up for us to work harder and smarter has all been shut down this lockdown and people are feeling it.

Personally, I love working at home. Throughout college I loved coming home to my own space to get work done and it was the best way to put the ideas I had onto paper and into my work. With the end of college work, a structured system with deadlines and the ability to go out all of my ‘productivity’ has seemed to have left with it. However, going into this lockdown I had promised myself to get lots done while I was at home with lots of spare time on my hands and I couldn’t help but feel bad when that just didn’t seem to take the shape I had imagined. I had been feeling like a mess, and seeing the people around me work really hard only made me feel worse.

Over my time in lockdown, I started to see dozens of articles that were teaching me ways to be productive and to be inspired to be at the top of my game in general. All of this only made me feel worse and honestly, I began beating myself up about this. These articles claimed to have all the keys to success I would ever need such as "Let’s tackle this lockdown with positivity and productivity!", "6 Ways to be productive during the COVID-19 lockdown", or "How to stay productive and creative while working remotely amid coronavirus lockdown" But soon, I also starting seeing posts and articles regarding the fact that I didn’t need to feel productive or do my best during this period, but reading those and all the reasons as to why I could be feeling this way didn’t make me feel better either. These claimed to know exactly how I was feeling and what I needed to do, or not do, such as; "Here’s how you can stop feeling guilty for not being productive during COVID-19 quarantine" or "Why you should ignore the pressure to be productive during lockdown" I thought I didn’t fit into the mold of the ‘usual person’ and that I was blessed to have as much as I did. I thought I didn’t need to feel the burden and the breakdowns caused by the virus and of the situation around me.

I just didn’t understand what was going on with me and why things weren’t working, and then it came to me. This construct of productivity doesn’t make sense even in a regular world situation for all types of people. As clichéd as this sounds, not everyone needs the same things or even the same number of things done to be ‘productive’. We haven’t been born to fit into the world around us, but that’s the aim of most public organizations. In a sense it is what makes everyone the same, useful to society and to organizations. However, what if we looked at being productive in a different way from what we’ve been taught. What if it was about paying better attention to the little things?

What if it was just about today and what you did on that one day? What if not everything we did was with a long term goal in mind, but was broken down into smaller, more measurable wins. We all need to reconsider what will bring us just a little bit of satisfaction in our actions each day in such a way that still allows us to be a part of the bigger system. The aim is not to leave a lifestyle that helps you sustain yourself but to find a way you can fit that into your happiness and not vice versa. This in no way means you should do less or more or something you don’t normally do, but it means that you now have the opportunity in their weird fame of time to reassess how you approach these things and make sure that you feel better when you do them.