The Thief That Is Compulsive Productivity

For many, many years I fell into the compulsive productivity trap. As someone who really values his time, I wanted to make sure that I was making the most of every moment. The idea was that the more I could pack into my day, the bigger my life would become and the more fulfilled I would feel.

This caused me to seek to do something productive in every moment. If I had a few extra minutes, I’d do a brief meditation or catch up on texts. If I was working out, I’d be listening to something educational. But worse, if I didn’t manage to do anything I thought was meaningful, or contribute to my goals with that time, I’d feel guilty about it. I’d worry that I was falling behind, preoccupied with the opportunity cost, and frustrated at myself for making lesser commitments.

More than anything, seeking to always be productive kept me from being present. Rather than enjoying the moment in front of me, in the back of my mind I’d be thinking about something else. Strategizing, optimizing, or figuring something out. I was appreciating the subtleties of life less because I was either focused in robot execution mode or seeking to transition my way back to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still all for being more efficient, productive, and making the most out of every moment. It’s just that now it takes a different form. It doesn’t come from a pressure to optimize at all costs. Now it comes with a constant desire to seek more awareness - to understand the conditions that led to lesser value commitments, curiously exploring what triggers me and sets off emotional responses, diagnosing the cause and effect relationship that governs life.

It’s not that I’m any more complacent than I used to be, or settling for a lesser life, it’s that my pathway to maximizing it is now through self-awareness. I realized I didn’t want to be the type of person who is hardly present. I didn’t want to be the person who tries to fight tooth and nail against the flow of life. I didn’t want to be the guy who has a deep need to be stimulated by something productive that he misses what’s right in front of him.

And while I don’t have a perfect fix to feelings of needing to always be on and productive, I have a process that’s been working for me. It’s through daily reflection and performance tracking that I’ve been able to read between the lines of life. And if you want to get a process like that working for you in your life - so that you’re less busy and more intentional, less irritated and more accepting - then click here to implement my system in 21 days.

It could change your life and help you tap into a deeper level of daily fulfillment… At least that’s what it did for me! 

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