Not-So-Obvious Productivity
I want you to imagine for a minute, that you want to build a house. Even if you don't know the first thing about construction, I'm sure you can think of a few steps it would take. We need to decide what we want the house to look like, make blueprints, build it, and finally furnish it. If you could make a list of everything required I’m sure it would be quite long. What's interesting though, is what probably didn't pop into your head was something like sleep. Or food. Or maybe music or a podcast to pass the time. Or a friend to help you out for the job's that can't be done by just one person. Or heck, maybe even a friend to just keep you company so you don't quit. We don't typically think of things like that when we try to accomplish something, because we want to get it down to just the essentials. But therein lies the problem. There is more to essential than meets the eye.
You cannot build a house without sleep, food, and water. It is a part of the process that is not as obvious when we first try to lay out the steps, but it's needed. When we set out to achieve goals and start thinking about everything needed for success, we usually only look for the obvious. But that would be the equivalent of saying "people sitting at desks = work." We want to hold onto things like that because it's something we can manage. It's something we can see. But sometimes it's the not-so-obvious that helps lead to success. Just like more PTO leads to more productivity. If you were to write out everything needed to accomplish a project at work, I'm sure a week-long vacation wouldn't be on the list. And yet we know it to be true that vacation time actually makes us better at what we do. We need to take breaks, go for walks, and just like stretching and rest helps our bodies recover from a physical workout, we need things to let our brains recover from a mental workout.
We know all this and yet we still view activities like that as wasting time. Two weekends ago, for example, I isolated myself to finish the last few chapters of my book. I drove up to Hanawa Falls, NY and came to my family's vacation home alone. During my nearly 4 days away, I wrote a lot. But I also hiked three mountains, went to three different bars/restaurants, went shopping to buy a ridiculous amount of snack-food (PSA: Don't go shopping when you're buzzed and hungry), watched 2 movies, 3.5 episodes of Stranger Things, finished reading Ready Player One, and went for a ride in the kayak.
Knowing that my goal for going up that weekend was to "write my book", it would have been easy to view anything outside "write my book" as unproductive. It's how I used to view things that like. I would get mad at myself for doing anything directly outside the job to be done. Stop wasting time, I would tell myself. Just do it. However, just like we can't build a house without sleeping and eating, I can't do something creative without living a little and giving myself space to think and just be. I don’t know if you're like this too, but if you are I hope you'll join me in no longer viewing these things as "unproductive" and start viewing them as "not-so-obvious productive." This is an important distinction because when we realize this, it reframes how we might capture a formula for success.
If you want to try and build better habits for yourself, don't just look at the times you are obviously productive. We need to widen the circle to see what else has influenced the obvious. If all I ever did was try to recreate the moments I was in the zone and typing a mile a minute, I would fail because that moment isn't just about where I am, the music I'm listening to or the beer I'm drinking. It's about everything leading up to that moment. So cut yourself some slack and don't feel guilty for taking a break. It might be exactly what you need to get back on track.
