Why Productivity Is The Opposite Of A Meaningful Life & What To Do Instead

A great life isn’t about chasing some future goal.

Over the years, and after what Don Miguel Ruiz calls domestication, we think that if we chase the future, that one day, we’ll have everything we need to live our best life. We’ll have more time to do what we want to do.

We end up chasing goal after goal, task after task, and fill every minute of our day, trying to be “productive.” As a result, every day becomes a constant pressure to make progress on some future reality.

In the process, we end up losing what we have right now, in this moment, for something in a distant tomorrow that will likely never come.

I became productivity obsessed, and reality stressed.

Over the last decade, I became obsessed with maximizing my daily productivity.

I would try to squeeze in as many tasks as I mentally could to ensure my goals and business would thrive. I would set daily themes, time blocks and categorize all my tasks.

My days would be packed with “stuff” to do, but any time a goal, project, or task was completed, it was quickly replaced with another to fill the void.