Productivity - julianreed.net

Much of our waking time can be divided into two categories of activity: consumption and creation.

Consumption includes most of the time we spend on social media, watching sport, listening to music or shopping. Consumption is passive entertainment and it’s easy.

Creation, on the other hand, covers anything that brings something new into the world – from building a garden office to creating a video. Creation involves thinking and endeavour; and with it comes struggle and frustration and failure.

When offered a choice between consumption and creation, the path of least resistance means that consumption usually wins, some examples:

Consumption
3 glasses of wine every evening? Definitely

A pizza for dinner? Easy

Watching the entire Ted Lasso series over the weekend? Consider it done

Creation

Developing that app to improve the life of millions? I’ll start next month; on second thoughts, make that next year…

Landscaping the garden? Too busy

Speaking a new language? I don’t have time

Consumption, like most things that are easy and enjoyable in the moment, does not change our life. Watching our team win the Champions League feels great on the night it happens, but the next day nothing in our life changes.

Creating involves action and making mistakes and taking risks. But when we create, we bring new things to life, including:

the thing we are creating
a new version of ourselves that grows from our experience of creating
the satisfaction of having used our unique gifts and life experience to create something new. This reward may be far more long-living and meaningful than the fleeting enjoyment we experienced by seeing our team win or from drinking a glass of whisky
the possibility that our work will have positively changed, in some small way, the life of at least one more person

Perfectionism vs. productivity

I often attempt to carry out tasks ‘perfectly’: making a cup of coffee, the elocution of a phrase in a foreign language, selecting a new laptop (or pretty much any new purchase) or writing an email. I also strive to be an Olympic gold medalist in productivity – where I strike off to-do list items in record time.

The only problem is that perfectionism and productivity compete with one another in the course of anything I do. I realise that most of the time ‘high quality’ is indistinguishable from ‘perfect’. But, the idea of ‘imperfect’ is unappealing because I associate it with some degree of carelessness. And if what I do makes me what I am, then carelessness would mean that I don’t care.

Perfection, of course, is always unattainable, unless you are taking a maths test or a multiple choice exam. In the arts, if something is regarded as a masterpiece, it does not mean that it is perfect, instead it is regarded as having been made with great skill. Any masterpiece can always move further in the direction of ‘perfect’ – but would anyone notice?

The pursuit of perfection in the real world is deficient because of the vast amount of time it consumes – often at the expense of something more worthy. On the other hand, getting something done to a high standard and improving upon it the next time can provide a happy marriage between productivity and progressive improvement. Leonardo da Vinci produced a number of masterpieces – but he was only able to achieve them as a result of the learning he gained from countless deficient works that didn’t end up in a museum – such as the time when he first picked up a crayon.

As for this blog post, if in a month’s time I realise I can improve it by changing a few things, I am free to do so. And this blog post, as my first, will be nowhere near as good as my 100th or 1,000th. The idea of being able to refine something or to try again is liberating because it means I can move onto the next thing – which I will do right now!