There's a short story by
Leo Tolstoy about a farmer who was very poor, and who asked God for
help. Soon after, the devil came to see the farmer, and offered him a
deal.
“I will give you as much
land as you want,” proposed the devil. “It is up to you to decide
how much land you'll get. All you have to do is run as fast as you
can, tomorrow, from dawn to sunset. All land that you'll traverse
will belong to you at the end of the day.”
The farmer felt
exceedingly happy upon hearing the proposal, and turned to planning
what he was going to do the next day. He intended to cover as much
territory as possible, but at the same time, he wanted to ensure that
he would be running on fertile land.
At dawn, the farmer
started to run. He didn't take with him any food or water because he
didn't want to waste time taking a break for eating and drinking. He
only had one day to make his fortune, and wanted to make the best of
it.
For the next hours, the
farmer ran as fast as a reindeer on the prairie. However, when the
sun was high in the sky, he began to grow tired. “Should I stop and
get a drink?” he wondered. “Should I stop and get something to
eat?”
Yet, he determined to keep
on running, and continued the whole day without ever taking a break.
Occasionally, he would slow down for a few minutes, but then
remembered that the devil had promised him all the land he could
traverse until sunset.
The whole afternoon, the
farmer continued to run with a smile on his face, realizing that he
had already covered more land that he would ever be capable of
cultivating. However, he continued to run farther.
When the sun began to
descend on the horizon, the farmer felt severe pain on his chest. He
slowed down for second, and then stopped. “I am not feeling well,”
he said. Next, he found it difficult to breathe, and felt the taste
of blood in his mouth. And before he knew what was happening to him,
he fell on the ground, and died of a massive heart attack.
So much for a productive
day.
In the twenty-first
century, we are not far different from Tolstoy's farmer. We run all
day, and we are constantly looking for short cuts to do things
faster.
Each day, new software
applications become available with the goal of helping us answer
additional emails, read documents faster, access our files day and
night, and listen to audio recordings twice faster than the speed of
human speech.
Despite these innovations,
our work has become increasingly frantic. Millions of people do not
even take the time to have a proper lunch. Instead, they gulp down
some pizza, drink soda, and munch some cookies on the go, so that
they can keep running like Tolstoy's farmer.
Day after day, the scheme
repeats itself in the name of high productivity, but is this really
true? The problem is that some of those software applications are
going to prove worthless because they just help us do at a higher
speed things that we should not be doing in the first place.
Like it happened to
Tolstoy's farmer, the appeal of better results can make us lose our
sense of proportion. It can make us want more just for the sake of
getting more, while we lose sight of our primary goals. It can make
us want to do things faster, just for the sake of doing them faster,
without actually thinking if we should be applying our energies
elsewhere.
The danger of productivity
traps is that they can push us further than we want to go because
they make us forget the big picture. They make us forget that the
real goal of productivity is not to do things faster, but to do the
right things well at a sustainable speed.
If you think about it, we
shouldn't want to do things that add little value to our lives, nor
aim at working twenty-four hours a day. Least of all, we don't want
to create useless work for ourselves by filing electronic documents
that we will never have time to retrieve, let alone read.
Such useless exercises
remind me of the advice that Van Helsing, the vampire-slayer,
received in Bram Stoker's novel “Dracula.” This is what a friend
told Van Helsing:
“You were always a
careful student, and your case-book was always fuller than the rest.
You were only a student then, but now you're a master, and I trust
that your good habits have not failed. Remember, my friend, that
knowledge is stronger than memory.”
A friend was warning Van
Helsing against the danger of paying too much attention to details,
and forgetting about one's primary goal. Productivity traps produce
the same effect. They make us devote efforts to tasks that seem
urgent but that, in practical terms, deliver little value.
Like animals, we human
beings are fascinated by shiny objects. Everything new, everything
fresh, everything colourful attracts our attention, and makes us want
to try it out.
Yet, if we want to be
highly productive, we need to force ourselves to ignore shiny
objects. We need to force ourselves to devote our energies to the
areas where we can make a difference, to the areas that really count.
If you allow yourself to
get carried away by productivity traps, you will end up like
Tolstoy's farmer, getting a heart attack while you were trying to do
something that you should not be doing in the first place.
Lack of consistency is
what makes people get ensnared in productivity traps. People forget
the primary purpose of their work. They forget their life's mission,
and instead, they just keep working for the sake of working. As I
explain in my books, without a consistent philosophy, nobody can make
the right decisions. With coherent views, nobody can resist the
appeal of productivity traps.
Already in the nineteenth
century, Jane Austen put in the mouth of Elizabeth Bennet, the female
protagonist of “Pride and Prejudice,” the conclusion that we
should be mistrustful of anything or anybody that lacks consistency:
“There are few people
whom I really love, at even fewer of whom I think well. The more I
see of the world, the more dissatisfied with it; and every day
confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and
of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of
either merit or sense.”
Consistency is the answer.
If you keep the big picture in mind, you will not find it difficult
to avoid productivity traps. If you possess a strong sense of
direction, you will not find it difficult to discard unimportant
things.
By sticking to your life's
mission, you will be able to become immensely proactive without
having to chase shiny objects that will eventually prove detrimental.
Highly productive people
don't feel anxious or stressed. You will not see them pursuing shiny
objects because they have long ago embraced the ideal that Walt
Whitman presented in his work “The Poet.” If you want to be
highly productive, you should also embrace this ideal:
“Nothing out of its
place is good; nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every
object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less. He is
the arbiter of the diverse; he is the key. He is the equalizer of his
age and land. He supplies what wants supplying; he checks what wants
checking.”
Let the ideal of
consistency, simplicity, and balance guide your life. It will help
you avoid worthless shiny objects and productivity traps, and
hopefully, contribute to preventing an early death due to a massive
heart attack.
Text: http://johnvespasian.blogspot.com
Image: photograph of classical painting; photo taken by John Vespasian, 2016.
For more information about rational living, I refer you to my books
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