It’s always being talked about, compared, discussed and measured, but what does productivity actually mean, for us as human beings?

Well, it’s defined as ‘the effectiveness of effort’ and, in business terms, is calculated by the equation: output (goods or services) divided by input (labour hours). However, I often find myself questioning the transferability of this term, and general concept, into our day to day lives. In all honesty, I fear the impact on our emotional and mental wellbeing of seemingly treating ourselves as machines and expecting to achieve a certain amount of ‘progress’, or to complete a particular number of tasks, every single day. The issue I see with this attitude – where a days’ success is determined by how many items have been ticked off the ‘to do list’ – is that if, or more indubitably, when, we don’t do as much as we had aimed to, we ultimately feel that we have failed. We feel that we have been unsuccessful, despite most probably completing any combination of; going to work, cooking dinner for a family, making a friend smile, caring for a pet, cleaning a home, reading a book, offering advice to someone in need, learning a new skill, visiting a relative and many other worthy activities. If you have done any of those things, then how can you really have failed?

I guess the question I’m really trying to ask here is; what makes a day, a person or even a mindset, productive? Oh, and why do we always feel obliged to strive towards that supposed ideal, even if it’s to the detriment of our wellbeing?

There are days that I will have been to the gym, showered, had breakfast and am ready to face anything that will be thrown my way by 9am, but on other days I’d be lucky for any of that to have happened by 3pm (if at all!). As hard as this has been for me to understand or accept, being highly perfectionist and, as I’m regularly told, too hard on myself, I am gradually learning that productivity is entirely relative. It’s dependent on your energy levels, your mood, the weather, your health, the phase of the moon, your hormones, the people around you, the food you’ve recently eaten etc. Essentially, as long as you’re honouring the space in which you are currently existing and are being true to yourself, it’s more than okay for your biggest achievement to be shopping for food or brushing your hair one day, then being submitting your final dissertation or having a job interview the next – that fluctuation constitutes the nature of life. The beauty of it’s ebbs and flows; everchanging, as with the tide.

I am by no means saying that we shouldn’t use lists, plans and timeframes in order to work towards our goals – in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth (trust me on this one, I write lists every day!) and I’m not foolish enough to think that there won’t always be chores, tasks and jobs to do. What I am saying though, is that, as hard as it may be to believe, sometimes those things can wait. I think we must occasionally take a step back so we can appreciate how far we’ve come, how much we’ve achieved and to remember that there is no rule book on how you should be living your life. I realise it may be atypical to query what appears to be the ‘ultimate goal’ of improving productivity in all aspects of our life; but I’m increasingly finding myself wondering if it is really necessary, or even healthy, to want to be on-the-go, doing all number of things, at any given moment. I wonder also if we even know when or how to stop.

There are times when we just need to give ourselves a break; it’s undeniable that life can be quite the whirlwind and it’s all too easy to get swept away with it.

Perhaps, if we shifted our focus from judging success, or ‘productivity’, by the number of completed tasks to our feelings of self-fulfilment and satisfaction, we’d be able to appreciate even the little things that we do every day which make a positive difference to ourselves, our friends, our family, our community and the world. We may even find that we are more conventionally ‘productive’ without the burdening weight of pressure and idealistic expectations.

If you can go to bed feeling that you directed your energy into positive outlets that moved you a step closer towards your goals, then your time was used well. If you radiated love and spread happiness to other beings, then you were successful. If you are content with the way in which you spent the blessing that is a day of existence on this Earth, then that day was a productive one.

All in all, if you take anything from these rambling thoughts of mine then please let it be this; it’s okay to not be achieving ‘huge’ things every day so long as you’re spreading love and happiness to yourself and those around you – life has no rule book.

All my love & namaste, Lucy x

“As long as you’re being positive, you’re being productive”.