Boy, I’ll tell ya… Between reading all these “boost your productivity overnight” lifehack articles, and watching “Become rich yesterday by following these three simple and oddly vague investment tips Wallstreet does NOT want you to know about” webinars, to enrolling in Masterclasses on how to become a super-human, knowledge-crazed, learning-addicted, Terminator’esque reading-machine, I’m so far behind on my actual work that I’m gonna need Doc Brown’s keys, Aladdin’s lamp and half of all the Adderall at fucking CU if I’m ever gonna crawl outa these weeds.
Finding new and fun ways to be more productive is great. Gold star bro! But when you start spending most of your time in a preparatory state, organizing, color-coding and making to-do lists that refer you back to other, older to-do lists, you’re no longer being productive, you’re just jerkin’ it Carradine.
Productivity porn
– a thing that apparently we now need a term for – is when you see someone surrounded by a dozen or so pulsating productivity apps – Evernote, Slack, Trello – and they’re thinking to themselves, ‘whatever happens over the next 45 minutes, I know I won’t be doing anything I should be doing, I’m probably not going to make any real money, and I’m definitely gonna need a shower after it’s all over… and they’re right. (Too subtle, or not nearly subtle enough?)
Success Porn is another popular cyber peephole perfectly positioned for optimal mental masturbation. This is where people obsess over spurious factoids like “Steve Jobs wore the same clothes every day to increase his capacity to make decisions” and if I do that maybe I’ll be successful too! No ya won’t Kyle. You’ll just be the weird dude in IT that no one invites to HH because his BO. The notion that “Elon Musk works 100 hours a week” so I should too, is fucking ridiculous. You’re not building rockets or constantly dodging Russian assassins Stephanie, so go tf to bed.
The irony here is of course that the most productive people we know don’t read lifehack articles about increasing their productivity. They don’t watch super-charge your work-day videos and they don’t try a new app every month in the hope that it will help them finally get through that to-do list. They are far too busy getting things done to read the book Getting Things Done. To put it as obscenely as possible, they’re too busy getting it in everyday to be jerking off at home.
So let’s all put the production porn away, stop deluding ourselves that any of these hacks and apps are actually helping, and get to work. I know I won’t.
Thank you for reading. Please like and subscribe. This rant was brought to you by Brazzers and Dropbox.
