How we check for productivity
Even in our downtime, being busy is one of the cultural hallmarks of being ‘productive’. I’m in a small hippie mountain town as I write this. While the wide open lake and stand-up-paddle boards point to relaxation, people are busier than busy. Torn between running, biking, going for coffee, perusing the Vintage Vinyl records shop, the gelato store, and the farmers market- my fellow downtimers fill and manage every ounce of time.
Now let’s shift our attention to the upcoming fall- where a full line up of projects, deadlines, multi-stakeholder collaborations are in the works. Combined with our reluctant return to the Google news feed and complex family calendars, our busyness will intensify.
When you fill, manage, curate anything, it gives us the illusion that you’re powerful, free, and productive.
Are you productive? Or just performing “busy”
Busy is often conflated with productive. This turns up when you override your intuition and say “yes” to more than you really want to. Or when you say “yes” to things in order to to be seen as someone who accomplishes. Busy begets productive, especially when your actions and behaviors become a performance, for which you’re rewarded.
How so?
It might go something like this. After you’ve confessed to an old colleague in the grocery store about all the things you’re “doing”, they remark “oooh, you’re SO busy”. Their admiring approval legitimizes your pace and volume of activity, and momentarily makes it worth your exhaustion. Or you’re asked to take on another project because you’re the person everyone turns to because you get tons done.
In many realms, we’re collectively recognized by the norms and expectations of a culture that prioritizes heavy output.
Different masks of being productive
Here’s a few different ways we choose to be busy, in order to appear ‘productive’. (And remember, there are infinite masks we wear depending our stage of developmental growth).
The Ultra– The sheer volume and pace pushes you to your edges of energetic and mental fitness, where you finally feel alive. The busier and more challenging the pace feels– you feel worthy (of attention, love, belonging).
The Martyr: You want to help everyone and fix every problem. Being busy is a selfless act of service. To prove it, you’re on every board, at every meeting, taking care of your neighbour’s sick cat, and traveling constantly. You have no idea what really needs to get done unless something is asked of you.
The Battle-Ready: You head into the day with armor, a solid plan, and the voice of a champion. You get up at 5am to “get ahead/on top of that”. Emails, the bolded, unopened ones, claim your attention. Hungry for crisis, you thrive on checking off every urgent request. The day is marked by your allegiance to a bloody trail of interpersonal and organizational emergencies.
The Cost of Performing Busy
Now, there are countless other ways to perform “busy”.
But in the end, for most leaders, the result is that we’re too busy and we never “have time” for what’s really important.
While the collective interprets our performances as outstandingly productive, we end up with a relationship with time that’s limiting, or to the extreme, lifeless. And the cost is your energy and the quality of your attention.
Ironically, when we attempt to control our time to gain more time or freedom, it never comes.
How a new relationship with Time can help you be more productive
What’s your relationship to time? How conscious is it and how can your quality of attention increase your productivity?
An integral approach explodes the idea of ‘time management’. It moves in and through the limiting idea that you are either managed by or can effectively manage time.
Let’s think of it this way. When I’m unconscious about where I’m giving my attention ‘time’ is like a river at high water. (“I can’t believe how fast the day, week, summer has gone.” or “Time is flying by.”)
For example, my thoughts, energy, and micro-decisions about where and what I’m doing become disconnected to the undercurrent of my energetic system. I’m thrust this way and that, without a deeper quality of presence. Instead, I perform busy by unconsciously filling my time.
However, this is where an integral pivot can unleash a fundamental basculer (loosly, to turn upside down, in French).
Instead, time is an evolving matrix of energy and attention. Us and time are in dynamic relationship. Time yields space and freedom for me to pursue what is true, what is called for in each moment. It offers you a space to express, to move forward, to connect, and shift beyond the borders of the status quo.
And while it gives, it also asks something of you. Time hungers for our presence and intention.
So if you want massive productivity this fall include and move beyond management: all of them (email and assistant management, reverse-engineering projects), to something fundamentally deeper and richer.
Instead, ask yourself: How do I intend to spend my time? How is each choice of activity guided by an intention that is rooted in a clear sense of self?
You may discover that your intention and your choice of activity are disconnected or getting you no traction at all. Or, you discover that you’re embracing a deeper why- and you’re swimming with the river, rather than being swept away by it.
xo,
Jennifer
P.S Want to be more intentional in your life and experience more freedom as a leader? Hungry to scale your influence, and feel like you’re at a new edge of growth and development? Easy to sign up for a FREE Discovery Session and learn how I can help here.
PPS. Come and check out the latest on IG. It’s a highlight of my favorite spot in the BC mountains for an art blitz. My time here has helped me connect to a deeper vision of how Spark will support YOU over the next year. And if you are hungry for something Spark can offer, email me at jennifer@sparkcoaching.ca and let me know what you’re looking for!
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