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I Didn’t Do the Thing Today

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I Didn’t Do the Thing Today

Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

Avery,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Productivity as the sole measure of your personal worth is a false and self-defeating appraisal.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eloquent
  • Engaging
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Writer and interviewer Madeleine Dore spent longer than five years searching for the secret to productivity, only to discover there isn’t one. Instead, she found that how well you love, learn, and embrace uncertainty is a better measure of a day well spent. Dore’s refreshing treatise recommends abandoning your quest for better time-management techniques and adopting a more flexible approach to getting things done — one that allows for stumbles, encourages creativity, and builds self-acceptance.

Summary

When the measure of your worth is how much you get done, you’re bound to feel undone.

The prevailing culture uses productivity as a metric for individual value. Like many people, you may internalize these cultural cues and equate self-worth with how much you achieve and how well you achieve it. The growth rate of your to-do list tends to outpace your ability to check off every item, causing you to feel anxious, guilty, and incompetent — especially when other people seem to be perfect models of efficiency.

To stay abreast of their to-do lists, people try to optimize their days, applying various routines, downloading new apps and attempting the latest life hack. When these efforts inevitably fail, individuals berate themselves, missing the fact that the productivity bar was always set too high to leap. Humans are imperfect, and life never goes according to plan. Distractions abound, plans fail to materialize, and emergencies occur.

Viewing your day through a productivity lens doesn’t recognize the richness and vibrancy life has to offer beyond a checklist, and it leaves little time for generosity and kindness. A packed schedule has no room for, say, thanking...

About the Author

Madeleine Dore is a writer and interviewer who is curious about how we can all foster more creativity, connection, and meaning in our everyday lives. She created the interview project Extraordinary Routines and hosted the Routines & Ruts podcast. She shares new writing in her Substack, “On Things.”

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