How to Be Super Productive (Minus The Burnout)

Photo snippet from Poor Cherries, a film directed and produced by my favorite Jimmy Marble

Our fast-paced success-obsessed culture celebrates busyness.

We’ve come to believe modern lies that our work = our worth or that working to exhaustion is equivalent to having a fulfilling life.

And so we’ve put our careers on a pedestal. Everything else—our relationships, health, wellbeing, spirituality, and even our sleep––are pushed to the sidelines, on the dying end, under “things I’ll only give attention to when they’re already suffering.”

We’ve put staring into our screens all day, answering emails and scrolling through feeds high above spending quality time with the people we love, taking good care of the one and only body we’ll ever have and connecting with nature, our creator, with the deepest truest part of ourselves.

The saddest part is, most of us seem to accept these habits as new norms we just have to deal with.

The good news is, you have a choice. And in most cases, you don’t have to work to exhaustion to live a life of true joy.

I want you to know that yes, hard work is beautiful! It's satisfying, it allows us to grow and stretch ourselves. It feels soso good when other people love (and even better, benefit from) the work we do.

But know this: work should supplement our life, not be our life. And we don’t need every hour of every single day to accomplish great things or to live a fulfilling life we can feel proud about.

The secret comes in productivity. Real productivity, not aimless busyness.

Know the difference:

Busyness is hustling all day doing random activities aimlessly. Productivity is doing a handful tasks that lead to specific outcomes.

Busyness is trying to do everything and being everywhere, especially in today's context. Productivity is about focusing on the few essentials, even if that means letting go of other things we enjoy.

Busyness is rushing to get this and this and this done all at once. Productivity is giving yourself wholeheartedly to one thing at a time. 

Busyness is getting frustrated over not accomplishing as much as you want to. Productivity is remembering that you're only human, and that you can't do it all.

So, busyness or productivity?

It’s your call! But I know you're smart so you'll make the right decision ;)