When Productivity is a Problem
When Productivity is a Problem
How getting things done can get in the way of being who we long to be
I am a recovering productivity junkie. This means I am (no longer always but historically) a doer, one who easily clicks into a dreaded gear we call Task Mode™.
You’d know it if you saw it. It’s when the laundry bin leads to the dust bunnies which leads to “Why not clean out the entire garage today?!!!” There is no reasoning with or relating to a person in Task Mode™. There is only getting out of her way.
The work version is similar but distinct. It looks like me sending emails one minute past my hard-stop time and checking my inbox while waiting for water to boil for dinner or for a child to wrap up the world’s longest teeth-brushing session. Work Task Mode™ is the hard-to-shake feeling that if I’m not doing something right now, I probably should be.
There is much good that can be done when we click into some forms of these hyper-productive gears. They can be a boon for our workplaces, our ministries, our churches and our homes. We can quickly cycle through an inbox full of dreaded tasks and clear an entire room of the clutter that’s been collecting for weeks at the corners. We can Get. Things. Done. We can produce. And it can feel really good.
But you know, deep down, that productivity for productivity’s sake also has a shadowy underbelly. While getting things done can be good, it can be done in wrong ways and for wrong reasons.
Chelsea Sobolik Patterson writes in the last chapter of her new book Called to Cultivate: A Gospel Vision for Women and Work, that the psalmist’s cry to “Teach us to number our days” is ultimately a prayer for wisdom, not a prayer for productivity.” Rather, fruitfulness and faithfulness are our goals, not producing for the sake of producing.
To that end, here are four not-great reasons to be productive that we can “diagnose” in ourselves, and the better way I’m finding forward.
1. Getting things done in order to feel good.
Symptoms: A heart-pounding, feet-moving sensation accompanied by racing thoughts: “I will feel better once I just… I need to tidy this space now… write this email… finish this grocery list so I can feel better.
In this state, we are scrambling with busy fingers for a feeling of peace that is just one more task away. We think of how good we’ll feel when we’re done and feel that there will be no enjoyment of anything until we arrive.
Better way: Stop. Pause. Right in the middle of the rushing from one task to the next, stop and hold very still. Breathe in. Say something like this to yourself: “Nothing terrible will happen if I stop right now. I am not holding up the universe. I can take a minute.”
Whether you sit down or keep going, there will always be more to do. We will never truly reach the end of the task list. We have freedom in the finished work of Christ to rest right in the middle of it. Doing so might just help us enjoy the doing a little bit more, and it will certainly make us more able to receive the interruptions that arrive along the way.
2. Productivity to please others.
Symptoms: Yelling “But people are coming over!” and “I have a deadline!” Seeing the humans that live in your space as obstacles in the way of ordering it. Seeing the humans in your workplace as obstacles in the way of doing the work that is due.
Better way: When it comes to the (understandable) desire to have a tidy space to welcome people into your home, find your limits and learn to live well within them. For us, that means I only give myself 20 minutes to prep for people coming over, and especially for our biweekly home group meetings at our house. If I give myself more time, I will click into crazy Task Mode™. I will start hollering at the little humans like a drill sergeant. I will forget that this place and this stuff exists for people, not as a showpiece.
At work, the treatment looks, again, like taking a deep breath and a moment to pray. “Lord, you know what’s on my plate, even the things I’ve forgotten. Would you order my next few hours around what matters most?” When we bring our to-do lists before the Lord, we are reminded that all things are from him and for him and through him. We are reminded that the economy of the kingdom doesn’t work the same as ours. It is outside of time and tasks, and it always makes space for people. I’ve seen this prayer answered by gracious deadline extensions or by suddenly productive writing sessions. But the biggest thing it delivers is a change in my perspective — and my heart rate.
3. Trying to outrun anxiety.
Symptoms: Speaking of heart rates, this one sends it through the roof and is accompanied by an inability to locate the one thing that needs to be done next because EVERYTHING FEELS URGENT.
Better way: Take a walk, if you can. One of the fastest ways to slow the anxious movements of my mind is to purposefully move from one spot to another. When you can physically make forward progress, somehow it helps the scattered thoughts fall back into order. When you get back from the walk, make a list and then number it. What really needs to happen right now? Set a timer to do it and then be done. If it’s a dreaded task or series of tasks (this is me with the dishes every night) put an audiobook or music in your ears to help you start the task and focus on one at a time.
4. Doing what doesn’t matter much to avoid doing what really matters.
Symptoms: Setting aside a chunk of time for deep and important things and then spending it on social media instead. Repeatedly. Leaving the document you’re working in to check email again, “just in case.” (Fighting that temptation as I type right now.) Putting a phone between you and the face of a child you’ve missed all day. Seeing patterns of avoidance add up into full-blown procrastination on the one thing that’s necessary, the one thing you really wanted to do this day or this week or this year.
Better way: This is a sticky one that must be addressed in layers. The top layer might be technology habits. If you keep pulling a Romans 7 and doing the very thing you do not want to do on your phone, I suggest these lovely books to help you create better habits (and understand why they matter): The Tech-Wise Family and The Life We’re Looking For by Andy Crouch. And The Common Rule and Habits of the Household by Justin Whitmel Earley.
If we’re putting off bad habits, we need to replace them with better ones. Develop deep work habits instead. The book Deep Work by Cal Newport is a helpful place to start, but the idea is that you make and protect time to do the things you really want to do. You have to be ruthless at first, fighting the feeling that it will be better to distract and avoid. Fighting the feeling that being busy will feel more productive than sitting still to do what matters. Rehearse how good it will feel to have started the thing, to have made progress on the thing and, one day, to have done the thing.
By recovering I mean…
I am hesitating to push send on this newsletter, even though it’s the topic the vast majority of folks on social media said they wanted me to address. Because I have not and never will arrive on this one.
Right now, I’m really struggling with No. 4 as I transition from book writing to book marketing. (You can preorder We Shall All Be Changed now, actually! Look, I just marketed. *checks box) This is ironic, because writing the book required me to do really deep work. Now I know in my bones how good it feels to do the thing you really want to do, the thing you feel like you were made to do. And yet, it’s still hard to put in the time.
I told my pastor that there is no arrival gate in book writing. There is no, I’m here and what else is there to do now? So far, one task leads to another, and I can feel my productivity nature flaring up in new ways. I can feel like a Girl Scout selling my wares on the street corner, filled with insecurities I didn’t know were there. I bring these new feelings to the Lord, like candy I’ve been hiding in my pockets. “Here’s one more,” I say. And yet I don’t sense disdain, only an invitation to bring these unwanted emotions into the light, to walk with a little more faithfulness and dependence right where he has me.
I have the “one thing is necessary” quote up in my kitchen from the Martha and Mary story, for the days when I forget that the room exists not as a showpiece but to feed people. And it’s still true that my productivity impulse is most often a problem when it keeps me from the very people it intends to serve.
When I sit on the driveway to be with my kids during the cooling hours of dusk only to feel dragged into sweeping out the garage or sorting the mail or, worse, distracted by that doggone phone in my pocket. I have set aside time to do the thing I really want to do — be with my kids, give them my fullest attention — but it’s scary and hard to actually do. It really can be scary for a productivity-oriented person to hold still. It really can be hard to trust that not moving will do my soul and the relationships I value most some good.
And yet, I can rehearse what I know to be true until it feels a little truer. I can pause and reassess the habits that treat us like humans doing instead of humans being. Be still, the Psalm says, and know that He is God—and you are not.