I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

by Madeleine Dore

Our human desire for connection is contorted in the digital world, and as a result, it is contorting us. The instant gratification of sharing something online, the rapid news cycle, and the constant churn of information we’re exposed to are dampening our tolerance for quietness, boredom, and empty time.

our devices are changing our minds and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies: that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be, that we will always be heard, and that we will never have to be alone. It’s this third idea—that we will never have to be alone—that is central to changing our psyches, says Turkle: “Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device.

This never-ending stream of high-tech advances has challenged our brains at a fundamental level, negatively impacting our work, study, stress levels, anxiety, relationships, health, and sleep. Our obsession can cause distraction, our bingeing can cause a negative spiral in our well-being, and our fear of missing out spoils what we experience in our own lives.

“We may think we are in control of our social media usage, but in fact it is controlling us, which only becomes apparent when you try to change your behaviour, but cannot. These can be the roots of addiction, which become increasingly harder to escape over time, reinforced by the very design of the technology itself.”

Instead of constant connection, we need to practice the art of connection—and we can do this through cultivating attention.

We live in an attention economy: entertainment platforms, advertisers, and media outlets use our attention as currency, and it goes to the highest bidder. On top of this exchange, the various parts of our daily lives also compete for our attention—the emails we answer, the errands we run, the call to a friend. All of this is a transaction,

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

constant attention dulls our attention.

Perhaps we should start by analyzing how we spend this limited resource that is our attention. Instead of digesting everything we see, hear, or read, we can be more discerning in what we offer the generosity of our attention to.

“To anyone trying to figure out their life, pay attention to what you pay attention to. That’s pretty much all the information you need.”

Distraction dissipates when we notice it, because noticing it leads to attention, and attention can lead to focus. Despite the cunning design of our distractions, we retain the capacity to choose what we attend to. We can choose what we do with this hour, who we listen to, who we ignore, who we amplify, what habits and hobbies we cultivate, what opportunities we take. It is this reclaiming of our choice in what we pay attention to that reconnects us with ourselves and our sense of agency.

To broaden our capacity for love, we must broaden what we pay attention to—and to broaden what we pay attention to, we must broaden the moment.

Lingering broadens the moment by encouraging us to take our time. If we give space to spare time, we allow more life to happen naturally and for something like love to bubble up.

“attention hour”—a designated pocket of time devoted to paying attention to what we have been paying attention to. You can tuck yourself away in a quiet, distraction-free space with just a pen and paper and ponder what you’ve been reading, learning, thinking about, giving your attention to—or perhaps your desires, your relationships, the passions you have been neglecting.

Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensées, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” It’s during this time alone, as we pay attention to what we’ve been paying attention to, that we might find the solution, think of the right thing to say, or identify what has been pushing us toward soothing distractions in the first place.

know what breaks your attention so you can send it on its merry way.

Resist the urge to toggle, to multitask, to flit between things; instead, focus on one task, one browser tab, one moment at a time.

Often we think we can achieve much more in a given timeframe than is possible.

attention is the only antidote to distraction: instead of eliminating distractions, focus on protecting your attention. A common suggestion is to schedule focused time

we need to take mental breaks in order to sustain our attention.

a short burst of exercise, going outside, daydreaming, taking a nap, or talking to someone on the phone are restorative breaks.

If you can’t find focus, step into a distraction you enjoy rather than being stuck in an aimless and ceaseless distraction.

Be fully present with the thing you are doing rather than feeling guilty about the thing you’re not doing.

our fixation on being perfect can prevent us from making any progress at all.

It’s stifling because we fear not doing it right or getting it wrong, so we avoid doing anything at all: we delay starting. It’s relentless because we fear that what we do is not good enough, so we avoid sharing anything at all: we delay finishing.

perfectionism stalls progress in our daily lives, it stalls progress in our society. We cannot move forward, we cannot learn and unlearn, and we cannot change if we are stifled to the point of inaction.

To do anything, we must be willing to get it wrong, to be bad at something, to fall short of perfection. The only way out is through.

in pursuing perfection, we are chasing a shadow we will never quite catch up with.

To overcome perfectionism, we must learn to leave ourselves alone—to stop being our own bullies, stop judging ourselves for taking messy incremental steps, and instead focus on the act of trying.

Such insistence on being perfect—both internally and externally—means that many of us find it unbearable to be only so-so at something. This fear of mediocrity seeps into every part of our daily lives.

Perfectionism is an illusion, but if there were a path to it, it would be one of iteration.

success is just a set of well-curated failures:

our pursuit of perfection is really a pursuit of a better life—if

But we are not perfect—we are contradictions. We are virtue and vice, strength and weakness. We are both kind and impatient, we are glorious and self-destructive, we are striving and disorganized.

“We’re so obsessed with life-hacking and with becoming these productive, shining examples of ourselves, but so much of good creative work comes from being a person that has tensions in their life.”

When we narrow our day to how productive we are, we leave little space for generosity and kindness. When we have a crowded day, a catch-up with a friend or a conversation with a neighbor might seem a burden. When we hide our imperfections, we can dampen our opportunity to connect. When we pursue higher, better, more, we may overlook those around us. We don’t see each other, we don’t hear each other, we don’t extend enough kindness to each other when we are confined to the doing.

The habit of being a little kinder than necessary may be the very thing that can untether us from our doing obsession. No longer is it simply about what we did or didn’t do in a day, but also whether we extended our kindness in small but impactful ways to those we encountered,

People never forget those who were kind in the moments they needed it most. People may not remember what you did, what your job title was, or what exactly you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. We remember who believed in us when they didn’t have to but also when people underestimated us.

To be kind, we must be curious. When we are curious about other people, about ourselves, about our experiences, we become kinder—we strip away impatience, we don’t rush into assumptions, we listen for answers. Curiosity seeps past the judgments we make about other people to reveal hundreds of little threads of connections we might never have known were there. It’s curiosity that bonds us—the

Being interested in the world around us and the people in it can propel, expand, and nourish us, but it is also what makes us interesting.

So what if we found a way to find the miracles in the ordinary instead of trying to optimize the humdrum to the point of its elimination? After all, without the ordinary, we’d be missing where life happens.

Curiosity is what allows us to see that the most ordinary fact about our lives is already rather extraordinary—we’re here. We’re living.

In our doing-obsessed culture, we tend to focus on those things we can measure, but some of the most important things in life simply can’t be measured.

It’s the ordinary things in our days that can help us find delight, satisfaction, and enjoyment if we learn to look. When we do this, regularly and often, we are cultivating a practice of being more curious and orientated to finding the beauty in ordinary things—interest begets interest,

small moments that we can control can also cultivate happiness—however we might define that—especially amid uncertainty.

These small, good, ordinary things can shape a day into something good, even amid a string of not-so-good days. They are the things we can do just for us—not for a badge of honor, not as a favor or to prove something. When they pile up, we slowly begin to have something we can stand on, things we have some control over, a ballast that can steady us in our days.

We take for granted that things can change in an instant. Most things will be okay, but not everything will be. Not everything a day brings is positive, but even on the days that something blindsides us, we can find some good—or remember that something good will come again.

Tomorrow is not just a new day, it’s a different day—and if we’re interested, if we’re curious, we can look for the highlight within it, even if it’s just one small, good, ordinary thing.

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. —Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts

We cannot wait until we’re perfect; until we’ve gotten through our to-do list; until we’ve streamlined our routine; until we’ve fulfilled all our goals, ambitions, and dreams—our real life is unfolding now.