Stop Worshipping Productivity

Your fixation with productivity is killing your productivity.

Yeah, I said it.

We’re living at 100 miles an hour—work deadlines, family obligations, emails, texts, meetings. If a minute goes by without us “producing” something, we start feeling guilty. Like we’re falling behind.

Well, here’s the truth: that guilt is bullshit. You’re not falling behind. 

Not every second of every day needs to be filled with something productive. Downtime is not a waste of time. 

The obsession with squeezing output out of every second doesn’t make you more effective. It burns you out. Hyper-productivity is the fastest way to crash.

What nobody tells you is that the “empty” time—the walk around the block, the fifteen minutes of meditation, the pause before the next meeting—is what fuels you for the rest of the day. That’s where your mind resets and your body recovers. 

And here’s the kicker: your best ideas tend to sneak in when you’re not forcing them.

I used to treat downtime like weakness. If I wasn’t grinding, I felt like I was failing. But the irony is, the grind only works when you actually step away from it.

So here’s a challenge for you: get comfortable with the time you AREN’T doing something. Don’t just tolerate your breaks, own them. Treat them like part of the work. Because they are.

The time you’re “off” is the reason you can come back sharp and focused. Use your breaks as an opportunity to refresh yourself so that your mind is ready to take on the next set of challenges.

And if that feels uncomfortable, good. That means you’re starting to notice how addicted to the grind you’ve been 

So take the damn break. Then get back to it with more in the tank.

-G aka the Break Boss

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