Why do we need to be always busy?

‘Not a productive day,” I heard a man moan to two colleagues in a departure lounge. “In fact, not a productive week at all.”

He proceeded to moan about his to-do list and his email inbox and the impossibility of getting to the end of either.

The others moaned in sympathy. They then launched into the usual shoptalk that means nothing unless you’re one of them, in which case it seems fascinating and important.

I went for yet another walk up and down the almost empty departure lounge. The word “productive” kept rolling around in my mind. I try to be productive myself – it’s a good substitute for existential angst – and I, too, would like to get to the end of my to-do list and my email inbox.

Then I realised what was wrong with the relentless pursuit of productivity: almost all of us in the western world are already as productive as we are ever going to be.

We have our productivity apps, our “how to be more productive” books, our diaries, our mobile devices, our goals and all the rest of it but we can never get to the end of our to-do lists and our inboxes because they are too long and they keep growing.

Maths problem

Our lives have become like a maths problem in one of those old schoolbooks: a man fills bath with x gallons of water. When he has filled the bath the man unplugs the stopper. Given the dimensions of the plug hole and of the bath and the speed of the water, how long will it take for the bath to empty?

I was never able to answer such questions, though if you’ve been paying attention it’s probably a breeze. I’m pretty sure though that if the man with the bucket keeps filling the bath it’s never going to empty.

And in our world the bucket seems to keep getting bigger and the filling of the bath never ends.

To cope with all this we have become as productive as we can and we search for new ways to get even more done. But we’re like elite athletes: we’ve reached the pinnacle of what we can do. We can work on little improvements around the margins but, really, there’s no big leap waiting to be made.

I derive some strange comfort from accepting that I don’t have to be more productive because it’s impossible anyway. I don’t have to get to the end of the to-do list because the guy with the bucket is always going to be there, pouring away. And I don’t have to clear the inbox because unless you cheat (by filtering lots of emails out of sight and out of mind) you can’t do it – it’s that guy with the bucket again, or maybe his wife.

But if I keep accepting this, will I be back to that existential angst which I said my to-do lists and so on are a substitute for? Without the pursuit of productivity what am I meant to be doing in my one and only life?

Religious belief

For my parents’ generation religious belief meant there was something more important in the universe than accumulating a list of tasks completed. Today for many of us, including myself, that belief has been replaced by uncertainty. In

The Antidote

– Happiness for

People who

Can’t

Stand

Positive

Thinking

,

Oliver Burkeman

quotes psychologist

Dorothy Rowe

as saying that we fear uncertainty more than death itself.

Busy doing things

It seems to me that one way to cope with that fear is to be busy doing things. And if the list of things to do is so long that we won’t get to the end of it until we arrive in the ultimate departure lounge, then all the better.

Or maybe the real answer to the productivity versus uncertainty puzzle is simply to acknowledge that much of our effort is futile and to be willing to wait. For what? For an answer to the question of what we should be doing instead, if anything.

Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@yahoo.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.

@padraigomorain