Why mindfulness matters more than the latest technology when trying to be more productive.
We make many sacrifices on the altar of technology. We sacrifice physical movement, we sacrifice the quality of our interpersonal relationships, and we sacrifice sleep, just to name a few. We make these sacrifices willingly, because of the perception of great benefits that technology brings us, not the least of which is the promise of greater and greater productivity.
Humans are natural strivers. We have a limited time on this planet, and we want to do stuff while we are here. We want to accomplish meaningful things, we want to achieve wealth, status and success, and we want to leave a footprint behind—a legacy that shows (even if only to our own kin) that our life mattered.
The technological revolution has promised to help us in these efforts. Through automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more, technology would become a partner in helping us to accomplish more with less effort, thereby fulfilling our greatest dreams and leaving our best legacy. The question is: Has technology lived up to its promise to help us be more productive?
The early decades of the technological revolution were a mixed bag. On the one hand, we have had new tools, easier exchange of information, and better automation of processes. But somehow these advancements seemed to have a limited impact on the quality of our lives. Think about how much airlines have changed in this century introducing new technologies to streamline the check-in processes with online check-in and computerized kiosks. And yet, somehow, passengers still need to arrive early to the airport and wait in line just as they always have. For the average joe, no time has been saved.
On the other hand, the increased exchange of information through the advent of the internet, e-mail, and social media platforms has certainly transformed the way we communicate. And we do have access to more information than ever before. But this has been as much of a burden as it is a boon, as the enhanced speed of communication has also made us busier than ever before. Maybe this busyness is helping us be more productive, but sometimes it feels like we are spinning our wheels and not really gaining ground on our most meaningful objectives.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of this first phase of technology came in the 1990s and early 2000s with the ability to learn and share via the internet about different best practices on how to be more productive. We have learned new techniques from many experts and new systems for productivity, such as “first things first” popularized by Stephen R. Covey, or “eating that frog” by Brian Tracy. These techniques prompted people to focus on the biggest, and, most important thing they needed to get done first, before getting distracted by the minutiae of the day. The “pomodoro technique” was developed by Francesco Cirillo promoting the idea of working in short bursts of productivity (usually around 25 minutes) punctuated by periods of rest (5 minutes) to maintain your focus and energy levels high on the tasks at hand. Or, my personal favorite, “getting things done” which was popularized by David Allen in his book published in 2001. The book outlines how to organize all of your incoming information into projects and easily manageable tasks. These systems, and many more like them, have been broadcasted widely via many online productivity experts over the past few decades. The exchange of ideas in the age of information may have indeed enabled us with new tools and techniques for getting things done.
The second phase of technology-enabled productivity has been the creation of new tools and platforms that have emerged from the early 2000s up to today. In the past 20 years, we have seen a number of new platforms emerge that are designed to help us execute against the productivity techniques and systems of the previous decades. In this phase, we have seen the integration of Outlook into almost every Fortune 500 company in the world, with systems of folders, calendars, and to-do lists to help workers be more productive. We have seen new project management platforms such as Trello and Slack that help entrepreneurs and business start-ups to apply agile thinking to their projects within a shared workspace. And we have seen comprehensive new note taking tools such as Evernote or Notion that help us to manage and organize all of the information coming into our digital space.
Interestingly, we now seem to be entering a third phase. Experts are beginning to acknowledge that there is no system or tool that can rescue us from the productivity treadmill. Every new tool, tip, or technique that we employ to get more things done also becomes a magnet, attracting more and more tasks and projects. The better we are at responding to email, the faster emails come back to us. The better we are at finishing projects, the more projects come to us. No matter how efficient and effective we are, we will never come to the finish line, because work increases in direct correlation with how productive we are.
The new approach, espoused by authors such as Oliver Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, or Chris Guillebeau in Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live, is to accept the fact that you can’t get it all done. Forget about finding the perfect system or the perfect tool that is finally going to allow you to do everything you would like to do in this life. According to Burkeman, “It’s a question of reconciling yourself to the fact that you’re only going to be able to do a handful of the many, many potential meaningful things you could do with your life.”
This emerging approach to productivity is inspired by mindfulness philosophy. In mindfulness practices, the goal is not to eliminate negative emotions, but to be aware of them, and accept them. The suggestion here is to accept that we will not be able to eliminate the uncomfortable feeling of leaving work or going to bed with a mountain of unfinished projects clamoring for our attention. We should notice these feelings, accept them, and continue on with our lives.
After decades of throwing technology at productivity, we are becoming busier than ever before but still feeling unfulfilled by our accomplishments. Maybe the greatest solution will not come from technology after all, but from simple, ancient mindfulness-based philosophies. The latest productivity hack can’t be found in the app store— it is about letting go of our desires to accomplish everything, accepting that there will be many things that we wish to do but cannot, and choosing what is the one thing we want to focus on or accomplish in this moment.