The Productivity Myth: Debunking 5 Common Misconceptions
Productivity is interpreted differently by different people, these are 5 things the majority get wrong.
1️⃣ The Definition
Many people think productivity is about having a lot of tasks and being busy all day. Others believe it’s about being efficient with everything you do and people keep piling up different techniques to become more efficient, they sacrifice flexibility and it gets complicated and chaotic after a certain point.
Productivity isn’t about how much you do, it’s about what you do. How much impact do these tasks have towards your goal? Choose meaningful tasks. It’s good to be efficient, but it’s not the only thing.
Read more here: https://medium.com/codeduckling/producktivity-why-we-need-to-rethink-our-definition-of-productivity-3a7e39d709fa
2️⃣ Productivity Techniques
You might’ve seen articles like “x techniques to make you productive” and more. But as we’ve seen in the previous point, productivity isn’t about the number of tasks and your efficiency, it’s about the impact. These techniques will not make you productive.
They will, however, help you become more efficient. People tend to design their lives around these techniques and combine a bunch of these, which makes flexibility quite difficult and everything comes crumbling down with one mistake. Use these techniques as tools and it’s better to keep those to a minimum.
3️⃣️ Multitasking
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, “The M in multitasking stands for myth”. People think multitasking is like a 2x productivity boost. It’s not. Multitasking is fine with some tasks, but most of the time it’s more inefficient compared to focusing on one task.
Our brains are bad at multitasking. You have to switch your attention and context every time you switch tasks. This might lead you to forget some information and details, and might even lead to confusion. And not to mention, it serves as a distraction to keep you from being efficient.
4️⃣ Breaks and Rest
Breaks, rest and having fun are often associated with being lazy and procrastinating. That’s not the case. I always say “Any time unaccounted for and spent unintentionally is a waste of time.”
Breaks and rest are just as important as working hard. Similar to machines, our performance depletes when we’re low on energy. Let your body recover and you’ll perform the best you can with the utmost energy every time.
5️⃣ If I Did It, You Can Do It Too!
No, you can’t. Productivity is subjective. Your measure of productivity will definitely be different than the person next to you. The same goes for the techniques. Productivity is not universal. You’ll have to try and figure it out for yourself. Experiment with different techniques to find suitable ones for you.
Suitable productivity techniques differ from person to person and from situation to situation. Different techniques have different pros and cons. You can stick to your suite of techniques, but being a little flexible will go a long way.
✨ Some More Thoughts
All of the articles, techniques and learnings about Productivity are useless if you don’t put them into action. Productivity isn’t about learning, it’s about doing, so don’t rush into learning everything. Your learning is not proportionally related to your productivity.
Learn one thing at a time, and implement it. Works? Great. Doesn’t Work? Move on to the next technique. No one and nothing can make you productive, it’s all up to you.
✨ Footnote
Hey there, hope you liked the blog post. I’m still learning different things about productivity and exploring the different concepts and techniques, trying to understand it better. I’d love to hear your thoughts and views on this.
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