We all want to improve our productivity. But where do we stop? Is productivity a never ending climb to an ever-growing mountain? And is it the right mountain?
Here is how I think about productivity: You are operating at optimum productivity when you are living the life of your choice, your dreams. When you are not at optimum productivity, you have a nagging sense of something amiss in your life. When I think of productivity in this manner, it becomes easier to know whether I am optimizing in the right direction.
Increase in productivity should lead to corresponding improvement in life satisfaction. If that isn’t happening, what you are thinking as productivity gains may actually be gains in the wrong direction.
Optimum productivity also tends to be a journey, not a destination. Operating at optimum productivity is hard. When you are in a field that pays the bills while also draining your energy, it can be near impossible. That’s where most people tend to be in life, struggling to find the path towards that elusive optimum.
If you find yourself in this situation, keep searching until you land something that feels a natural fit and gives you energy even if that means going to a lower paying gig to start the climb again.
Time and again, you will see that people refuse to climb down and restart again because they are afraid that all the work they have put in the current field will be wasted. So they continue to labor. I made that mistake in my career when I kept climbing the corporate management ladder, refusing to restart even though it was a draining experience. I was very competitive, always wanting to improve myself, so I did well. What I did not realize was that I was improving in the wrong field – no amount of forced competency can change a draining experience into an energy gaining experience. Competency and energy are different dimensions1. The best place to be is the gig in which you gain energy and you have an ability-advantage over others, i.e. you are naturally competent. That best place is going to be unique to you. You must experiment broadly to find it. The alternative where you never reach your optimal productivity is much worse.
- Competency and energy may feed off each other to some extent. If you gain energy by doing something, it will be easier to develop high competency in it. Similarly, if you are really good at something, it’s likely you gain energy doing it too. ↩︎
