64. Productivity Fatigue?

Hello there. 

Are we still doing happy new years?

Probably not, but as I need some sort of intro to this post, happy 2025! 

With it being (sort of) the beginning of a new year, I’ve been in a bit of a reflective mood lately.

One of the things that I’ve been reflecting on is how I like to spend my limited time on earth, and how I have actually spent it. 

And in recent years, I’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of it balls deep doing the whole self-help and productivity thing.

The reason for this was basically because I felt down for quite a long period of time, and wanted to do something about it.

So, a simple Google of “why do I feel so miserable” sent me down the ‘personal-development’ (I know…) rabbit hole.

Ahh, how my young and impressionable brain took so much of the stuff that I consumed as Gospel.

All the classic lifestyle changes. Earlier wake ups, more exercise, more reading, more writing, more working, and so forth. You know the drill.  

I have got, and still do get, a lot of value out of doing those things. However, towards the end of last year I really felt like I was starting to hit a bit of an ‘urgh’ point with some of it...

I remember the specific moment. I was walking around Kennington Park listening to a podcast. Yep, one of those classic ‘productivity/grind bro’ type podcasts. 

Historically, something like this would have got me hyped up. This time, and pretty much since, not so much. I just couldn’t really be arsed. After years of enjoying this sort of stuff, it felt like I’d hit some sort of... I dunno, productivity fatigue?

Now, worth saying, I’m not hating. Speaking from experience, this type of content can be incredibly useful, especially if we’re feeling a bit lost in life. 

Amongst other things, it can encourage us to put a shift in ourselves (in whatever area of life that may be). And I do think that understanding our individual capacity, willingness, and extent to which we’re wanting to ‘be productive’ has real benefit.

Firstly, to go back to what we were saying at the beginning of this post, it can allow us to more accurately understand how we genuinely want to spend our time. 

Some people may get off to hustling 100 hours a week, or going to the gym everyday, or obsessively doing whatever thing they’ve got their mind on… and some people may not.

The good thing about trying the obsessive route is that we tend to find out.

Secondly, by knowing how we want to spend our time, I think it’s easier to make peace with the relevant outcomes of how we do spend it.

For example, say we were to regularly hustle 100 hours a week, we’d probably make pretty decent career gains. However, it’s hard to imagine that we’d be in the best physical health, or have the most thriving relationships.  

Trade-offs, right? To make progress in one area of life, we probably need to make sacrifices in others. Dial up one thing, and we inevitably need to dial down others. 

It’s like that “There’s no perfect way to live your 20s” idea. Nuance aside, we either live them up and become an underskilled 30-something year old, or we work them up and become under-lived 30-something year old. 

And looking ahead to 2025, that’s a balance that will be very much front of mind.

On that, pints?