The Tyranny of Efficiency

The existence of a world of productivity, the books, the articles, the talking heads (including myself), all point to an unspoken assumption that productivity is always a good thing. 1 While there is utility to learning how to focus, how to decide where and how to do work, and even learning how to get to the things you enjoy, perhaps there is a dark side to it as well.

When I first encountered Getting Things Done, I began to marry it to OmniOutliner’s kGTD (the OmniFocus precursor). The prom...