Jason Kottke had a thought-provoking post about how a focus on productivity and optimising our time might actually be harmful to creating the kind of space we need to allow our minds to wonder, to play and experiment, and to take those big leaps forward. His post was stimulated by a reflection that Cory Doctorow had about more than a decade of using David Allen's approach from his 2001 book (which I've also read) Getting Things Done.
Allen championed the idea that our list of things that we want to do will always be longer than we have capacity or time to actually complete and so without a deliberate method of prioritising the things that are genuinely fulfilling or will likely be a bit harder or take a little longer, our tendency is to focus on the things that are easy to cross-off and are the most trivial – which means that over time we end up accomplishing a lot, but of little importance.
Doctorow notes that after many years of using Allen's methods to avoid this, he's identified a conflict between the optimisation of time and the kind of space you need to create if you are to be playful or experimental without any immediate or obvious gain:
'…undertaking new things, speculative things that have no proven value to any of the domains where I work (let alone all of them) has gotten progressively harder, even as I’ve grown more productive. Optimization is a form of calcification.'
Kottke notes the same tension in his own life:
'I get more done in less time than I ever have, but sometimes I feel like there’s nothing creative about my work anymore.'
And this resonates with me too. I think my productivity and output is probably at an all-time high, but I'm struggling to find the time to read/listen/watch things that are not directly related to the short-term need that I have to complete the current/next project – to do enough of the kind of reading that is not obviously relevant to what I'm thinking about at that particular time but which perhaps could start me off in a new, richer and potentially more rewarding direction.
I'm left thinking about Cal Newport's concept of Deep Work (there's a great episode of Bruce Daisley's EatSleepWorkRepeat podcast on this), and how potentially unhelpful it can be to be forever in the space where we are skimming over the top of everything and never taking the time to go deep on the subject for no other reason than it's interesting – even if the immediate benefit is not altogether clear.
For me, blogging is how I think aloud, and work out what I think about stuff. I've long noticed how the quality and quantity of input (i.e. what I read/watch/listen to) directly impacts the quantity and quality of output. It's something I need to protect but which is easy to let slip.
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