#38 - Productivity is about letting time use you, instead of trying to use time

We used to live life without caring about “productivity”

Did you know that there was a time when people didn't care about productivity at all? If you were to live in medieval times, you wouldn't face the problem of trying to get more out of life.

You would never feel like there is too much to do, that you need to hurry, or that life is moving too fast. This is because medieval people were mostly farmers, and they followed what is called a task-oriented way of living.

In this way of living, the rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, instead of being constantly measured against a ticking clock. They went to sleep at dusk and woke up at dawn. They milked the cows when they needed milking and harvested the crops when it was harvest time. Anyone who tried to do a month's worth of milking in a single day would have been considered crazy. There was no pressure to "get things done," because a farmer's work is never done. There is always another milking or harvest coming.

Introducing the concept of “time” in a tangible form of clock, calendar

In the modern world, we think of time as measurable sequences. If you're asked what plan you have for tomorrow, you'll probably visualize some kind of clock, a calendar, or some abstract timeline. Then you'll line up your activities against this imaginary timeline.

The first account of how the first mechanical clocks were invented involved medieval monks who had to begin their morning prayers while it was still dark and needed some way of ensuring that the whole monastery woke up at the required point. Their earlier strategy relied on watching the movements of the stars.

Making time standardized and visible inevitably encourages people to think of time as an abstract entity. The historian Lewis Mumford described the clock as something that disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.

The modern conception of time is like a conveyor belt that's constantly passing us by. Each hour, week, or year is a container being carried on the belt. We must fill it as it passes by if we are to utilize time.

The problems that have emerged …

When there are too many activities to fit into the containers, we feel busy. When there are too few, we feel bored. If we keep pace with the passing containers, we congratulate ourselves on "staying on top of things" and feel like our existence is justified.

But why are there suddenly more activities compared to the medieval time? People used to believe in the afterlife and see the world as unchanging and predictable. But the industrial revolution, along with its rapid technological changes, opened people up to the endless opportunities that the modern life presents.

They started to believe that the world is heading toward a more perfect future, so they feel the pain of their little lifespan—how much they’re going to miss out on. So they try to cram their lives with experiences that feel important.

Once time is abstracted from you and your surroundings, it's natural to treat it as a resource to be bought, sold, and used as efficiently as possible. Once it becomes a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or yourself, to use it well, or else you will feel you've wasted it.

It becomes more intuitive to project your thoughts into an imagined future, leaving you anxiously wondering if things will unfold as you want them to. Your self-worth is bound to how you're using time. It stops being merely the water in which you swim and turns into something you need to dominate or control. The problem with this is that it sets up a rigged game where it's impossible to feel you're doing well enough. It's impossible to experience time in a deep sense.

So, what's the solution to productivity?

It's not that you shouldn't try to get the most out of life. It's to embrace your limitations and admit that you cannot do everything you want to do, or what people want you to do. That way, at least you don't have to beat yourself up for failing to do the impossible.

Embracing your limitations is not merely an exercise in humility, it’s to engage in big, daunting commitments. Why? Because to embrace our limitations is to recognize that we cannot chase every opportunity or keep every avenue in life open. It's an acceptance that our time, energy, and resources are limited. That realization imbues your decisions with a kind of deserving heaviness.

Making significant, irreversible commitments represents a deliberate choice to invest in certain paths at the expense of others, but which we cannot know beforehand where the roads may lead to. When we fully invest ourselves in something whose outcome we cannot guarantee, we engage with life in a more meaningful way.

We are not merely spectators trying to optimize our experience from a distance; we are participants who have placed a part of ourselves on the line. This investment of self brings a richness and depth to experiences.

Embracing our limitations also means missing out on things, which is fine. Missing out is what makes our choices meaningful in the first place. To decide is to cut away possibilities that could have been brought to reality (the latin word decidere literally means to cut off).

The confrontation with limitation also reveals that freedom sometimes is not found in greater authority over your own schedule but in allowing yourself to be constrained by the rhythms of a community where you don't get to decide exactly when or what you will do.

And it leads to the insight that meaningful productivity often comes from letting things take up the time they take. You can stop seeing time as something that you use in the first place. Instead, let time use you. Approach life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success, but as responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history.