The day will never arrive when I finally have everything under control. I will never achieve inbox zero. Or superhuman optimisation. Perfect productivity is a trap. My career or family life will never be “balanced”, as I imagine. But it’s good news because it takes the pressure off. I can focus on making each day a separate life and invest in meaningful experiences.
Obsessing over getting on top of things won’t do me any good. I like what Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks said, “Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.”
So why are we still obsessed with productivity?
You know it. I know it.
Everywhere we turn, there’s the constant push to do more, achieve more, be more. We are in a hurry to tick off boxes. Productivity feels good. It gives us a sense of control. But it soon becomes a trap. We measure our worth by how much we accomplish, not by how much we live. There’s research to back this up.
Studies show that most people equate busyness with importance. The more packed their schedules, the more valuable they feel. It’s a terrible way to live. Because productivity becomes the end, not the means.
We are not designed to run at full speed all the time.
All the busyness is draining us. We are getting burned out on the altar of efficiency. People are exhausted, mentally and physically, but still aiming to complete a cycle that has no end in sight. We value “getting things done” so much that we lose sight of what brings out the best in us. Productivity has become a distraction.
It keeps us from asking the harder, meaningful questions about life. We are so focused on achieving that we forget to reflect on why we’re doing all this in the first place.
Philosophers like Thoreau and Camus warned us about this.
Thoreau spent time reflecting at Walden Pond, urging us to “live deliberately.” He wasn’t concerned with how much he could do. He was concerned with how intentional he could live.
Camus, too, talked about the absurdity of life, reminding us that looking for purpose outside of ourselves leads to meaninglessness. But we keep running, convinced that more productivity will give us the fulfilment we want.
The high cost of productivity
Our obsession with productivity isn’t so much about work.
It’s about how we define ourselves. We’ve tied our self-worth to how much we can achieve. If I’m not doing enough, I’m not enough. That’s the lie we’ve internalised. And it’s eating us alive. There’s a psychological issue at play. Society has turned productivity into a marker of self-worth.
We’ve tied our self-worth to what we accomplish rather than finding contentment in who we are. We wear busyness like a badge of honour. You ask someone how they are, and what do they say? “I’m busy.” And they say it with pride as if busyness proves they’re achieving something.
But is it? Or is it just avoidance?
A lot of productivity obsession comes from fear — fear of being irrelevant, fear of not measuring up, fear of facing ourselves. So we stay busy, scheduling and checking more things out to avoid stillness. But that stillness is exactly where the important stuff happens. That’s where we find clarity. That’s where we reconnect with ourselves.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He was onto something. The problem with busyness is that it keeps us from ourselves. Our need to do, achieve, get more things done keeps us from slowing down. From reflecting.
From investing in our relationships. From living in the here and now. Slowing down feels counterintuitive. It feels wrong, especially for those who glorify the grind.
But slowing down doesn’t mean doing nothing.
It means choosing to do the things that matter. It means focusing on what brings fulfilment instead of just filling time. The busier we are, the more we push aside life’s meaningful experiences. Cartoonist Bill Watterson notes, “We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.”
Busyness keeps us focused on the future, on the next task. We rarely stop to be where we are. We rarely live in the present.
How often do you sit with your thoughts? Not about what’s next on the list but about who you are, what you feel, and what a good life means to you. Because slowing down means facing ourselves. It means asking questions like, What do I truly value? What kind of life do I want to live? Why am I doing this? To what end?
Beyond the to-do list
Ancient philosopher Socrates warned us against acquiring habits that shorten life. He notes, “It is possible that a man could live twice as long if he didn’t spend the first half of his life acquiring habits that shortens the other half.”
Socrates also said, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
His wisdom still makes sense now. “I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty,” he wrote.
The real goal is to not just to live, but to live well. The philosopher Seneca also warned against living as if we had endless time, wasting our short lives on things that don’t truly matter.
He warned against “being preoccupied,” not in the sense of idleness but distraction. “People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labour or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing.
But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive.”
On productivity Seneca said, “You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed and do not cease where you had intended.”
People rarely think about how much they’ve truly lived, the implications of “busyness,” or how much of their lives they give away to “getting things done.”
How much of your time do you spend doing things that matter to you? Not to your boss, not to society, but to you.
This is the heart of the issue.
We’ve lost touch with what’s truly important because we’ve convinced ourselves that being busy is the same as living a good life. You can fill your calendar with tasks and still feel like you’re missing something. That’s because what you’re missing isn’t more to do; it’s more to feel, more to connect with, and more to be.
We’ve confused doing more with living more and, in the process, lost the real meaning of life. We think doing more will make us feel accomplished. But we’re just exhausted. Our sense of fulfilment is out of reach, no matter how much we do.
Reclaiming our lives
“No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied … since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn… Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die,” Seneca said.
When was the last time you sat with a friend or colleague and just talked — no rush, no distractions, just being present? Or the last time you chose to do nothing to experience something you’ve always wanted to do? Those are the experiences that stick with you.
Not the emails you sent or the tasks you checked off. It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay to sit with your thoughts. It’s okay to be deliberate about how to rest. The real question isn’t, “How much did I do today?” It’s, “How much did I live today?”
That’s the mindset I apply daily.
One that values life for what it is, not just for what we accomplish in it. You probably don’t remember the last time you did nothing. I mean really did nothing — no phone, no TV, no checklist in the back of your mind. It’s uncomfortable, right?
We’ve been conditioned to fill every gap with something “useful.” But in doing so, we’ve forgotten how to just be. I’m learning to sit in stillness again. To be with my thoughts, feelings, and experiences without needing to get things done.
The pressure to be doing something, improving, and working toward something is exhausting. But the worst part? It distracts us from what we need: connection, rest, joy, and laughter. These things don’t come from doing. They come from being, from slowing down, reflecting, and living in the here and now.
Maybe downtime means quality time with people you love. Maybe it’s time spent in nature, something meaningful you do outside work, or just sitting in silence.
Whatever it is, we all need time to process, to reflect, to just live.
We need time to reconnect with ourselves and with what truly matters. I’m not saying productivity is bad. It has its place. But it can’t be the centre of our lives. It can’t be the thing we value above all else. There’s a balance we’ve lost.
We’ve forgotten how to live slowly and appreciate the small experiences that make us come alive. I try to remember that I’m here to live, to love, to experience life in all its absurdity. And that’s something no to-do list can ever give me.
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