Toward a New Vision of Productivity, Part 1: Transformation
Something is afoot in the productivity blogosphere, something which, I think, reflects a wider change in society itself. In the past year, several popular personal productivity bloggers have changed their focus, sometimes radically, or even stopped blogging altogether. At the same time, new writers have launched productivity sites that have attacked the very notion of productivity.
Especially targeted in this shift is the work of David Allen, who brought us GTD (Getting Things Done). After several years of almost religious devotion among many, a small but growing number of people are becoming dissatisfied with the GTD methodology. For some, it is too focused on the issues facing corporate leaders; for others, it is too full of pseudo-religious Zen mysticism and California spiritualism.
On the eve of the December 30th release of Allen’s new book, Making It All Work, which promises to extend the core ideas of GTD beyond the executive suite, I thought it would be a good time to clear the tables and to look into the future at what a new vision of productivity might look like. For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be exploring the social context in which our ideas of productivity and, indeed, blogs like Lifehack and books like Getting Things Done exist, and explore some of the trouble areas in the field of personal productivity as we currently understand and live it.
The goal here is not to put forth a new system or anything like that, but to think about what’s missing and how we might fill it. Ultimately, I don’t think there is any particular system that’s going to work for everyone; instead, I hope to develop a set of principles that will act as a guide for each of us – myself included – to put into action in our own particular ways.
What’s Happening in Productivity Today
I’ve said in the past, Merlin Mann has a lot to answer for. Like many others, I was introduced to GTD by a post on his blog 43Folders, probably via a link from BoingBoing. Mann joined a handful of bloggers, including Gina Trapani of Lifehacker and our own Leon Ho, in exploring the idea of “lifehacks” first put forth by Danny O’Brien in a talk at the Emmerging Technology Conference in 2004. Lifehacks are tricks aimed at making some part of one’s life a little easier. It might be a shift in perspective about email, a common tool used in a creative way, or a technological solution to a formerly non-technological problem.
For several years, bloggers both popular and obscure have been sharing their hacks with each other, looking for ways to shave a few seconds off a repetitive task, or to make the best use of their limited free time.
But there are only so many useful tricks a blogger can share, and when there are dozens if not hundreds of bloggers in the same space, distinguishing yourself from the herd can be a tough challenge. It also does something funny to the mind, to write about productivity all the time. Writing about productivity becomes one of the things, if not the thing, that you’re getting done by being productive, and at some point that starts to feel just a tad too circular.
Productivity is Dead. Long Live Productivity.
In June of 2008, Glen Stansberry announced a change of focus at LifeDev. The change was subtle; the only immediately visible difference was his tagline, formerly “Productivity for Creative People”, not “Empowering Creative People”. On the surface, Glen’s reasoning seems innocuous enough: “The problem with the tagline was that it pigeon-holed me into one very, very specific range of topics.” But at a deeper level, the change has some profound implications. Productivity is supposed to be empowering, after all, or else why bother?
Glen’s decision was mostly personal, and did not reflect much of a change in LifeDev’s content – if anything, it simply brought the tagline more in line with what Glen was already writing about. A couple months later, though, a more significant challenge was issued, this time by the Grand Master himself, Merlin Mann of 43Folders. Frustrated by both his management of his own site and the crop of productivity blogs that had sprung up in the wake of his own success. Merlin issued what amounts to the “J’Accuse” of the productivity blogosphere:
Friends, I’m done with “productivity” as a personal fetish or hobby. There are countless sites that are all too happy to vend stroke material for your joyless addiction to puns about procrastination and systems for generating more taxonomically satisfying meta-work. But, presently, you won’t find so much of that here.
Except inasmuch as it can help move aside barriers to finishing the projects that you claim matter to you, “productivity” is often a sprawling ghetto of well-marketed nonsense for people who really just need a ritalin and a hug. So, for myself, random tips and lists that aren’t anchored to solving a real-world problem for a smart but flawed adult with a mind are dead to me. Pour a forty on ‘em.
From now on, I’m going to talk about how people make stuff.
Merlin’s change of heart – and change of focus – was significant for a number of reasons. First, his site was one of the first big productivity blogs, and his personality and charisma have made him a (hesitant) leader. Second, his early posts on GTD have probably sold more copies of David Allen’s books than anything else ever written about them. Third, Merlin’s “branding” of a stack of index cards with a binder clip as the “Hipster PDA”, and his promotion of the Moleskine, initiated thousands, if not tens of thousands, of techy geeks into the world of pen and paper capture.
Merlin obviously didn’t give up his commitment to being productive; what he gave up was his commitment to the idea of productivity in the abstract. For Merlin, what matters most is not the system, nor the tools, but the doing. And, more importantly, the doing of something meaningful to the do-er.
While the mainstream productivity blogs were subtly or not-so-subtly shifting their attention to the pursuit of creativity, a new crop of blogs were emerging with a new counter-productivity (which is NOT to say “counter-productive”) stance. Nick Cernis launched his blog Put Things Off in January, with a decidedly different approach epitomized by his site’s cute and fluffy kitten logo, a distinct change from the file folder motif of 43Folders. By the end of his second month, Nick had announced the death of productivity:
[T]he productivity industry has become a techno-spiritualist movement. People are now using productivity ’systems’, software and small beeping devices just because almost everybody else is.
Our obsession with ‘productivity’ is getting in the way of our lives.
I think we all need to look at how much time and energy we’re wasting on our quest to become super-productive beings, and remind ourselves instead that simple is often best. Perhaps it’s time to stop all the beeps for a while [emphasis in original; quotes taken out of order].
By the end of his third month, Nick had released an e-book, Todoodlist, detailing his own stripped-down take on productivity – sans gadgets, sans fancy notebooks, sans pseudo-spirituality.
Nick might have been a little late to the game; a year earlier, Leo Babauta, a former Lifehack contributor, had also released a stripped-down productivity system called Zen to Done. Not as confrontational as Nick’s, maybe, Leo’s system still emphasized minimizing the use of fancy gadgets in favor of simplicity and a more meaningful, unmediated relationship with one’s work.
Clay Collins went both of them one further when, in May 2008, he posted his Alternative Productivity Manifesto on his own upstart blog, The Growing Life. For Clay, the central problem we all have to deal with is meaning, and the creation of a lifestyle (or, indeed, life) around those things that give us meaning. Productivity is part of the solution, but it is not the solution. Indeed,
No productivity system can put you in a zen like, meditative, or mind like water state. A calm, focused, and meditative mind leads to greater productivity, but productivity systems cannot create a mind like water.
In this single item from “The Alternative Productivity Manifesto”, Clay cuts to the heart of the matter: being productive can’t give our lives meaning, they can only help clear the clutter so we can figure out and focus on the things that do give life meaning – and in doing so, find the passion and motivation to get done those things which are, in the end, meaningful.
“If you’ve crossed the river,” writes Merlin Mann, ”you should quit carrying the boat.” A productivity system helps us get across the river. A good one can help us navigate the shallows, ride out the rapids, and avoid taking any spills, but once we’re on the other side, we have to get out and do the work of making meaning of and in our lives.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
Recruiting Animal says on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
Re “Zen mysticism and California spiritualism”.
Are you just using this sloppy, smear-all, phrase instead of simply saying “spiritual concerns”.
Perhaps GTD does incorporate Zen but David Allen comes out of an off-beat Christian, spiritual community, not Zen.
Dustin Wax says on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 am
Recruiting Animal: I was trying to convey the attitudes that some folks have about the more religious-y aspects of Allen’s work, not expressing a blanket condemnation of it.
Geri says on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
It seems to me that we’ve got productivity (as we know it) nailed – which is excellent in itself. I myself have learned a lot from all of the blogs that you mention here, and completely agree with you about how influential Mann and 43 Folders are. I would agree however that there is a snag or a glitch of some sort as there are only so many hacks out there. I’ve noticed the same advice being represented with only minor adjustments, and GTD seems to have passed into common knowledge – there are GTD principles at the heart of a lot of productivity advice.
But we’re still writing about and searching for material on productivity, except now we seem to need that and something more, the meaning you mention which is reflected in the shift in the blogosphere you’ve described. I would hope though that whatever direction this shift takes that the productivity material doesn’t disappear altogether – it’s been valuable, and it seems like a stage that we need to pass through in our quest for meaning. Who can search for meaning when swamped by email?
Sergio says on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Why bother? If people are happy with the spiritual thing on GTD, good. I though everyone was mature enough to just get the system and apply to their lives – with or without the new wave mojo bojo.
I am using a GTD-like (simplified and adapted to my needs) to manage my workload and it works quite well – even though I never used the zen pseudo philosofy in it.
Jennifer says on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Interesting – I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’ve realized that I don’t really know what to do with myself if I’m not working. And what good is being ‘more productive’ if you don’t know what to do with that extra time you’re freeing up? Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Recruiting Animal says on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Thanks, Dusty, I’ll make note of that for the future. “Zen and California spiritualism” does not mean “all of that flakey crapola”.
I’m in Toronto, by the way, not California. And I don’t like guruism and superstition.
But a lot of spiritual stuff, and Zen, in particular, seems to be mainly a matter of personal development exercising.
Zen has a lot of colorful stories and phraseology but isn’t it mainly sitting meditation to break bad habits in your thinking?
Your mind wanders there so you learn how to keep it there by pulling your attention back to where you want it a few million times.
Recruiting Animal says on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
CORRECTION:
Your mind wanders THERE so you learn how to keep it HERE by pulling your attention back to where you want it a few million times.
(Dusty if you like you can correct the original for me and delete this).
Jonathan - Advanced Life Skills says on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Isn’t greater happiness the reason behind increased productivity? Don’t we convince ourselves that getting more done will finally give us the time for things we truly enjoy?
Our pursuit of increased productivity, should result in increased happiness right? But there’s a trap we need to be aware of.
Striving to be more productive and increase our efficiency can lead to obsession. We could wind up confusing achievement for happiness. Happiness should be the inspiration for achievement, not the other way around.
When our happiness is too wrapped up in achievement, we are putting our happiness in the future. We are denying ourselves the right to be happy until we meet certain conditions
KNau says on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
And what you end up with is people becoming ultra efficient at things that just don’t matter.
The biggest lifehack is realizing what matters and what is just mindless busywork. One thing actually moves you forward in life while the other is merely the illusion of progress.
James @ Organize IT says on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Great read. I think a lot of the problem with productivity is the definition of it. Old school productivity involves doing more for less. Works great in a factory, where your machinery and staff are doing one singular task and you’re just aiming to max the efficiency.
However, when you apply that to a human being and their entire existence it causes problems, because we have so many facets to our lives. We aren’t machines who have one pre-defined duty so we need to be more selective about what we do and when/where we apply efficient work habits.
Perhaps “productivity” isn’t the best word to describe where we are right now, but what other word could you use? Personal efficiency? Effectiveness? I use personal productivity as a catch-all but it’s not ideal.
Duff says on December 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Great summary article of the evolution of productivity blogging.
I think there is some meaningfulness in being productive itself, especially for men in Western society. Unemployed men often feel miserable and without purpose even more than men with meaningless jobs.
There seems to be meaningfulness in being a part of productive society at a basic level, but yet it’s not enough for contemporary life where we are aiming more for self-actualization through creative work.
Chris Cairns says on December 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I don’t think the “understanding of productivity and where the concept might be heading in the future” is really a topic of debate. It’s a means (a tool) to achieving some end, where the “end” is some self-defined state of one’s ideal lifestyle. That desired end state can be any range of things, from freeing up a mere 2 hours per week to pursue more family time or only working 4 hours per week.
Now the question of debate in my mind is the “how.” The how must be an ever-evolving set of practices and tools that address society’s ever-changing time-use issues (whether real or perceived). What we have to do as self-proclaimed “productivity gurus” is to keep abreast of the time-use challenges that people face, and update our toolset as needed to help people get more out of their lives. (I think this is why some bloggers become disillusioned with the subject: it requires constant maintenance.)
Let’s put personal productivity into perspective: it’s an emerging field. Sure, people of have been finding ways to optimize their lives for centuries, but unless I’m sorely mistaken here, I don’t think there’s been any similar large-scale attempt as there is now to codify it as set of principles or systems, although the way it’s been done thus far has been in a very fragmented manner. Thus, personal productivity is still a very immature discipline, both from an “academic” and “practitioner” standpoint.
We won’t advance the “field” much further unless a common, generally-accepted, body of knowledge can be established, serving as a unifying framework that’s relatively static yet flexible enough to evolve what we know works in most situations, most of the time. To do that, would require an organized network of personal productivity gurus driven more by an interest in defining and evolving the field (like PMBOK), and less by selling books and driving blog traffic.
While I think your attempt to capture principles is a good idea that can work in most situations, most of the time (like batching) is a good idea, I’d like to see LifeHack.org step up and organize this mess of disparate thought and codify a set of generally-accepted best practices, tools, and methods. Count me in if you do.
Dan says on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Like many things in life, many people have come to view personal productivity as an “art” — attaching some almost mystical import and aura to it. It’s no such thing. And it’s definitely not an emerging field.
People have had methods of personal productivity for decades. Definitely longer than GTD’s been in vogue. Day planners, note books, sticky notes, scribbles on a blotter, whatever.
Some people seem to forget that personal productivity is just that: personal. What works for me might not work for anyone else who’s read Dustin’s post. And to be productive, you don’t need a complex system, a bunch of buzzwords and jargon, and all sorts of fancy tools. Or, maybe you do. I don’t …
gregorylent says on December 23rd, 2008 at 4:18 am
ok … a very boring subject, minutely detailed …
LifeMadeGreat | Juliet says on December 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 am
Hi
I think one needs to be aware of what one means by “productivity”. Does it mean for you that you can do more things, or does it mean that you are freeing time up to do the things you love?
I think often being productive can lead to doing more of what you don’t really enjoy. For me it’s about being efficient with the “have to’s” and the “unpleasants” so that I have FREE TIME.
Am looking forward to your series.
Juliet
Matthew Cornell says on December 23rd, 2008 at 8:44 am
Dustin, I think you’ll find my manifesto earlier this month to be highly relevant. At The Real Reasons For The Modern Productivity Movement I argue that a major reason for our obsession with productivity is a perfect storm of 1) a really good best-selling book (Allen’s), 2) an urgent need for meaning in our lives, and 3) the explosion of blogs. Mix in the scientific method and the human capacity for self-experimentation, and you’ve got something remarkable.
matt
Keter says on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
As an ultra-early adopter of GTD, I quickly recognized that no amount of or skill with “productivity” was going to fix the real problem – a life overburdened with expectations, especially ever-increasing expectations at work.
I suspect a lot of high performers – the target audience of GTD – have similar situations in their lives. Their employers keep demanding more with no recognition that no matter how smart, organized, and dedicated a person is, there is only so much work that can be performed in a time unit. Eventually, even robbing more time units from one’s personal life to meet constantly escalating expectations reaches a limit – when neglected spouses divorce, when sleep deprivation causes an accident or health problem, when undone personal maintenance causes a functional breakdown.
So I think the “GTD backlash” really is scapegoating GTD for the real issue – frustration and fear born of unreasonable expectations we are essentially powerless to refuse without committing career suicide. The information gap here speaks directly to the reality gap identified by the difference in C-level and non-C-level pay.
IMO, GTD is good and I will continue to use my highly personalized version of it for the rest of my life, but what I – and a lot of other people like me – need is a way to regain control of others’ expectations and a way to say “ENOUGH!” when it really is enough, without being punished. This, honestly, is the difference between a free citizen and a slave, and we really, really need to reclaim our freedom.
Dustin Wax says on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Keter (and some others): I don’t mean to scapegoat GTD, or productivity literature/websites in general, and I don’t think Mann, Stansberry, Cernis, Collins, and the rest do either. I think the point is that GTD isn’t enough, but it *feels* like enough when you first delve into it. Suddenly, things start to click. Plus, Western society is very work-oriented — our work is often our primary identity (for better and for worse) and being better at it makes us feel like better people. and But sooner or later, there’s still something empty that GTD doesn’t, can’t, and shouldn’t have been expected to fix — and that space is where I’m trying to push this. To do that, I think we have to clear the decks of whatever the problems in GTD and other notions of productivity are, establish their limits more clearly, and figure out how universal systems can apply in individual cases.
I want to be clear that this isn’t GTD-bashing just for fun — and it still won’t be when Part III comes out in a few days with the title “The Trouble with GTD” :-)
Mike King says on December 24th, 2008 at 2:28 am
I too think that the GTD has become more of a bandwagon way of doing things and it is largely missed the chance to look deeper to ensure people do the right things. I’m learned that that is really the point of productivity and if you don’t look at that first to understand it, you can’t really do well with it no matter how many hacks or tricks you put in place. Then it’s just efficiency and not productivity.
Some might enjoy a series I just finished on productivity at my title link. Looking forward to see where this leads…
Karl Nitsch says on December 25th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
The reason for the season.. the reason for your life..
GTD without the “cali-zen” stuff won’t help you there..
Neither will Ferriss’ 4 Hour Workweek, but Keter, if you know the why, then Ferris will give you some tools to extract yourself from the rat race.
Peace
iRook says on December 27th, 2008 at 4:10 am
It is the testimony to GTD’s power that it can attract so much attention. The most remarkable thing about human beings is the diversity of perspective that you will find on any subject from the mundane to the profound.
Personally, I was wowed by GTD when I first encountered it, but I could tell early on that it
was going to be a wild horse to tame for me.
It boils down to individual preferences, I
believe. Here’s what I know about myself..
1. I am addicted to finding a better/faster way.
2. I really love tech, especially when I believe it will aid me in achieving (1) above.
3. My mind is naturally like an erupting volcano, “mind like water”, though useful, is just not my natural state of being, I mean,sometimes I find myself reading 5 books concurrently.
So if my natural state of being is anything to go by, I would obviously be attracted to GTD because it satisfied 1 and 2 above, I tried the Hipster PDA, I customized Outlook to work with GTD, I installed macros for PigPog methods and dabbled with a lot of GTD accessories, I really got a huge high from doing these things but the benefits to my personal productivity are not easily quantifiable.
When I fall behind I usually come up with a highly personalized stew of tools and techniques to get up to scratch with my work but I do borrow quite widely from many “systems” of personal productivity so you can hardly call it GTD.
The moral of my story is that GTD is a great map, but the territory differs with every individual’s perspective, we have elevated it to a well deserved pedestal in the personal productivity Hall of Fame but some of us realize that no matter how rigorous and sophisticated the tools we use, the real battles are fought deep in the psyche.
darron says on January 12th, 2009 at 1:21 am
It will be interesting to catch up on these stories. I really think the “backlash” is in its early phases. As our brains have started to become wired more like computers than brains the philosophies that try to expediate the transformation will probably be raged against once humanity has had enough.
A large community discussion about backing out early would be welcome. It’s about time to reinvent ourselves as people.
Clay Collins says on January 13th, 2009 at 2:17 am
Dustin, this really is an excellent article. Beautifully written and cuts to the core. I really enjoy this academic (in the best sense of the word) analysis. And thanks, also, for the mention.
–Clay
Brad Blackman says on May 22nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Cool, I wrote about the same thing, too, in a different way: Productivity is Dead… Long Live Productivity! Nice to see I’m not the only one!