🔋 Two Productivity Questions We Should (but don't) Ask

What are the productivity questions we should be pondering but don't actually take the time to ask?

Two Questions

When we set out to start something, it's all too easy to skip straight to the doing without spending time on the why. Asking and answering two threshold questions at the outset can help align your time and energy before you take that first action step.

"Measure twice, cut once," goes the adage. A bit of extra time on the front end saves significant time and prevents frustration on the back end.

Question One: What are you being productive towards?

Intentionally or not, you're allocating finite resources in some direction. Where do you want to end up as a result?

I don't mean this in the narrow goal-setting sense, doing X to accomplish Y, because goal setting is fraught. We've all had negative experiences with this approach. Setting goals feels good, mostly. Missing them feels bad, always.

It's true that sometimes classic goal setting is necessary, as it can be an important accountability measure, especially when multiple people are working together to accomplish some type of broader mission.

But in areas where flexibility is possible, like personal time and attention management, the better course may well be to intentionally set a more general direction and allocate your effort accordingly. Yeah, you still need an end state in mind — "if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there") — but progress towards that end state can be celebrated even if you didn't accomplish the entire goal.

Take mindfulness, for example. If you want to build that practice, it's worth acknowledging the progress of meditating more, even if you don't do so every single day.

As I've written before, being decisive about what you're being productive towards can help mitigate procrastination. Seeing your north star with clarity can help pull you towards it, and enjoying progress instead of beating yourself up for missing arbitrary goal targets can help you stay on track when life doesn't go according to plan.

Because, spoiler alert, it won't.

This is also the underlying rationale for setting yearly themes instead of new year's resolutions. I teased a bit of this in my 2024 in review post — more to come on this topic. For now I'll just say that my 2025 theme has been tough to adhere to, but it's doing its job by giving me something focused to strive towards.

Question Two: What are you giving up by being productive towards this particular thing?

Time is a zero sum game. You're never getting it back, and doing one thing with your time means you're not doing a different thing with that same block of time. See also, opportunity cost.

This is why multitasking, which we all think we're good at but 98% of us actually suck at, is so appealing. Finally a way to do more with limited time! But cognitive science says: not so much.

It's far better to admit that being productive in one direction means you'll be less productive in others.

Yes, some tasks can benefit multiple areas. Practicing an instrument builds the literal skill related to that instrument, but it also increases your creative potential and potentially acts as a stress reliever. But the time you spend practicing that instrument is time you won't be, say, exercising. Unless you're exceptional and can be a strolling one man band.

Coming to terms with your deeply human limitations can be deflating. I'm still thinking regularly about Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, but it wasn't until last week that I realized, in the middle of recording a podcast interview, that nearly half of my four thousand weeks are up. Oof.

But framed differently, those limitations can be empowering. The meaning of life is that it stops, says Kafka. So let's maximize this limited time and juice as much meaning as we possibly can.

How?

For starters, stop saying yes to everything. The more in tune you are with the finitude of time, the easier this gets. You can develop a genuine pleasure in saying no, because you know you're making an intentional choice to say a full-throated "YES!" to something else.

Say yes to the things that matter.

Say yes to the things you need to prioritize.

Say yes to the things that feed your soul.

Say yes to the things you genuinely want to say yes to, not just the things you feel obligated to do.

Say yes, sparingly and with gumption.

And say no to the rest. Time is too fleeting to do otherwise.

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Two notes on the meta behind this post:

If you've been reading my work for a while now, none of this is especially new. But evergreen lessons are foundational, and it's worth it to assess and contemplate them regularly.

Part of me wanted to discard this draft because it isn't entirely novel. But a recent blog post on blog posts by Henrik Karlsson inspired me to write it anyway. For of those of you curious about blogging, Henrik's is a must read.

Tex, a good friend of mine, recently started a blog of his own on law and technology. In true Tex fashion, he's approaching this in a compelling way, writing "Rather than guessing constantly about what's around the corner, I write from the simple premise that the future is uncertain and we understand less about the past and the present than we like to think. By looking at what's already in front of us and trying to understand it further, I think we'll be better off and learn much more (at the very least, we'll be calmer)."

I'm in.

Until next week, my friends.

-Ryan

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