Forget About Productivity

Forget about productivity and numbers! This day is a gift and it shouldn’t be crammed with every possible thing – spend time enjoying it and what you’re doing. From the Kdrama, Chocolate

At the beginning of every day, I sit down with my journal and reflect on the previous day and plan what I want to accomplish in the day ahead. I often write this sentence: “I wasn’t as productive as I had planned to be yesterday.”

I’ve always been a person focused on productivity. Accomplishing things. Not necessarily the star-studded type of things like winning the Nobel Prize in quantum physics, being a star of stage and screen,  or making the New York Times bestseller list.

I did manage to become a published author after thirty years of writing fiction. That’s a significant accomplishment, I guess. So people tell me. Making the bestseller list is still wishful thinking.

When I was working fulltime as the training and media specialist at a county-level government social service agency, there were always things to accomplish. The year’s training to organize. Curriculum to develop. Courses to teach. Quarterly newsletters and annual reports to write. State-mandated initiatives to implement through community-based work committees.

When I left my job and started my own staff development and personal coaching business, the number of tasks didn’t decrease, they just changed. In addition to developing and presenting training, I needed to market my services, find clients, track income and expenses, and obtain my coaching certification. And make a profit so I could pay my bills.

Now I am a fulltime writer. It’s as much a business as a creative process. My goal is to balance the marketing and reader engagement activities in hopes people will buy my books and still find the time to write new ones. It’s still about daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly lists, plans, schedules.

It’s still about productivity.

One of my all-time favorite Kdramas, Chocolate, is set in a unique hospice where family members can live with their loved ones and accompany them through the last weeks and days of their lives. In the story, two hospice employees struggle to reconcile the support they give patients with the inevitable grief at losing them, while trying to deal with their own life’s struggles. 

Moon Cha-yeo is a chef coping with a devastating childhood trauma. Lee Kang is a neurosurgeon working as the chief physician who sustained an injury which ended his surgical career. He grew up in a family that stressed accomplishment, achievement, and outcomes to grow the family’s corporate success and expand ownership of medical practices. The two main characters gradually find solace in each other.

As I watched this heart-shattering drama, several pieces of conversation among different characters gave me pause to reflect. “Remember, the day you’re wasting today is one that someone who died yesterday wished for.” “We will get lost again at one point or another, but as long as we hold onto hope, nothing can break us down.” And the famous quote of Epictetus: “The value of one’s life is determined by how much love one gives, not by how much love one receives.”

At some point, the director of the hospice says to the neurosurgeon: Forget about productivity and numbers! This day is a gift and it shouldn’t be crammed with every possible thing – spend time enjoying it and what you’re doing.

So it got me to thinking that instead of starting my day assessing yesterday’s productivity or vowing to be more productive today, I should remember the day is a gift. I don’t need to change what I’m doing; I just need a different attitude about it. Each task can be a way to embrace this stage of my life. I can be grateful I have the energy, health, and circumstances to introduce my creative works to the world and can delight in all the people I am meeting in the process.

Now there’s a list of accomplishments worth achieving.

Question: How can you learn to take joy in your day-to-day tasks?