"Productivity" as it's taught today is a loud, confused thing. Ice baths, cold plunges, sauna sits, forest bathing, dopamine fasting, actual fasting, waking up at 5am. This is doing everything but being productive. It's huffing your own keto-infested farts, all in the name of making yourself more disciplined, more fulfilled, more productive.
But here we've missed the mountain for the mole hills. Any or all of these things can be good, can lift us up. But none will raise us to the heights we want to reach.
"Productivity" has an energy, a sound, a song where each note is clashing with the others. The chords might be good on their own but they don’t blend with their brothers. This do-everything-and-hope productivity helps you about as much as your next door neighbor learning the bagpipes. It's mountains of suffering and real achievement remains out of your grasp.
Being productive shouldn’t be the goal. Mastery should be. Mastery of your work, your finances, your fate. Being able to wake up and give the big middle finger to anything you don’t want to do in life because you’re that good.
Mastery has a sound too, and it's a song of silence. The silence of hours put in. The quiet of concentration.
Mastery is the sound of a student learning from a mentor. It's the silence of working when others are sleeping (whether early or late). It's the quiet cry of frustration that opens the way to learning.
It's a song of few notes that becomes a symphony, echoing across nations and worlds, changing things (hopefully for the better). But the quiet must come before the noise. This truth goes back to the founding moments of the universe.
Whether you believe the first moment was the big bang or the "In the beginning...", there was a moment before. A moment of silence that led to an explosion of creativity. An eternity of nothing that led to everything.
Pursuing productivity instead of mastery is like stepping on piano keys instead of playing a song, like playing baseball without a bat or glove, like losing weight by starting a diet of only donuts.
Productivity without mastery is the cart in front of the horse. Become a master of your craft, world class in what you do. Find a mentor, get your focused hours in for a few decades. Find something that looks like work to others but feels like play to you.
You’ll be more productive than all the fart sniffers.
But here we've missed the mountain for the mole hills. Any or all of these things can be good, can lift us up. But none will raise us to the heights we want to reach.
"Productivity" has an energy, a sound, a song where each note is clashing with the others. The chords might be good on their own but they don’t blend with their brothers. This do-everything-and-hope productivity helps you about as much as your next door neighbor learning the bagpipes. It's mountains of suffering and real achievement remains out of your grasp.
Being productive shouldn’t be the goal. Mastery should be. Mastery of your work, your finances, your fate. Being able to wake up and give the big middle finger to anything you don’t want to do in life because you’re that good.
Mastery has a sound too, and it's a song of silence. The silence of hours put in. The quiet of concentration.
Mastery is the sound of a student learning from a mentor. It's the silence of working when others are sleeping (whether early or late). It's the quiet cry of frustration that opens the way to learning.
It's a song of few notes that becomes a symphony, echoing across nations and worlds, changing things (hopefully for the better). But the quiet must come before the noise. This truth goes back to the founding moments of the universe.
Whether you believe the first moment was the big bang or the "In the beginning...", there was a moment before. A moment of silence that led to an explosion of creativity. An eternity of nothing that led to everything.
Pursuing productivity instead of mastery is like stepping on piano keys instead of playing a song, like playing baseball without a bat or glove, like losing weight by starting a diet of only donuts.
Productivity without mastery is the cart in front of the horse. Become a master of your craft, world class in what you do. Find a mentor, get your focused hours in for a few decades. Find something that looks like work to others but feels like play to you.
You’ll be more productive than all the fart sniffers.