How to stay productive and not turn into a robot

Sometimes I get emails from people who think being productive makes us robots. The arguments are: we spend so much time focusing on personal effectiveness that we miss the opportunity to have fun, relax and do various "unproductive" things for which it is worth live. People write to me: “Yes, I could do more, but at what cost?”

I hope that most of you do not share this erroneous opinion. However, I can understand why some people think that way. All this talk of habits perfectly organized to-do lists and maximum efficiency sound a bit mechanical. And for superficial people, productivity really becomes the focus of life. But actually getting productive is one of the best ways to enjoy the wonderful unproductive times.

How are productivity and free time related?

I write about productivity because I'm a fan of it. I admire how people do their work and what drives them, so I always have a lot of ideas. This does not mean that I never put off things for later, do not succumb to laziness and do not change my good habits. This means that I spent a lot of time looking for ways to overcome my natural imperfections.

If we met in real life, you would hardly call productivity my main quality. To most of my friends, I'm just a guy who likes to party, go to gym and does everything else that people my age usually like. Getting the job done is what gives me more time to socialize, relax and enjoy life.

The problem with productivity is that it's not the answer to everything. If you don't have interesting hobbies, social skills, and outbursts of spontaneity, there will be more work to replace the amount of work you've done. However, if you have all this in your life, being productive allows you to do more and devote time to other aspects of life.

The more work I do, the better. I don't see any side effects of doing more tasks in less time. Even if you truly love what you do, the more you do, the more you get. Certainly, productivity techniques can be used to speed up the work you hate. And yet they are designed to get more out of the work you love.

I get up at 5:30 to make the most of every day. The first 10 minutes after waking up are hard, but working quietly in the early hours is an amazing feeling. Focusing on productivity doesn't stop me from waking up late on weekends. It doesn't hurt to spend a whole day playing video games or watching all the Bourne movies. On the contrary, it helps me to be selectively unproductive when it matters.

How to be productive without sacrificing free time

In his book “How to work 4 hours a week and at the same time not hang around in the office “from call to call”, live anywhere and get rich” Tim Ferris emphasizes the importance of separating work and personal life, rather than balancing between them. In his opinion, the balance leads to the fact that these areas are mixed with each other. And I fully agree with him. Necessary divide your life into areas where it is important to focus on productivity, and areas where you can enjoy unproductivity.

Every time I experiment with a new productive habit, like turning off the TV, I wake up or check my email less often, I try to figure out how this habit will affect my unproductive classes. If I can raise productivity with the least loss for my free time, it's usually worth it. But if that doesn't work, I understand that I need to fix the habit in order to maintain the separation between work and personal life.

The problems with productivity start when you take "quantitative" thinking that helps at work and apply it to "qualitative" areas of life where it doesn't work. Separation helps to involve different thinking in different areas.

When I try a new productivity tip, my goals are:

• Use the free time to take on even more projects that I like.
• Use the free time to enjoy selective unproductivity.

Both options suit me. If I take on more projects, I will get closer to my goals and do things that I care about. If I decide to spend the time saved on something unproductive, I can enjoy life and not worry about the to-do list.

In the end, the goal of work and leisure is the same: spend more time on what causes enthusiasm. It's easy to think of productivity as a reduction strategy. But where you simplify and reduce, you can get the time and energy to do more.