I. The Value of Productivity
I love productivity. Gettin’ stuff done. My idea of a perfect day is one where everything on my to-do list gets checked off (a rare occurrence). Admittedly, I’m more of a task-driven person. But regardless of your personality type, we all can learn from the plethora of productivity resources that have come out recently.
Think about all the newish books about habits and focus (My favorite is Deep Work by Cal Newport). Even more valuable are all the apps, tools, planners, calendars, helping us track our time, tasks, meetings, calories, and workouts (my favorite being a task-managing app called Todoist).
And of course, the only reason we’re all still on Facebook is to efficiently remember birthdays. “Of course, I remembered, grandma!”
Why has there been such an appetite for productivity resources recently? I think it’s because we’ve never had more options, opportunities, distractions, and demands on our attention. The average person is exposed to 6,000-10,000 advertisement per day. This would have been more than someone in the Middle Ages would have gotten in 500 years.
My friend Sam says: “it used to be that information was the currency of successful people. Now, as information is infinite and immediate, the currency of successful people isn’t information, but self-management.”
In other words, the most successful people aren’t the smartest or most educated or the most talented, not anymore. The most successful people today are those who carefully and intentionally manage their time, energy, and attention. People who can filter and focus.
So productivity conversations have been a helpful corrective to our distracted, hedonistic, and immediate culture, that I need to plan my week or my week will plan me. That scrolling through reels for two hours maybe isn’t a great use of my time. This renewed emphasis on efficiency gives us helpful boundaries, like when you go bowling with bumpers. Sure, it might be embarrassing, but you’ll get a better score.
II. The Problem with Productivity
Productivity can be helpful, but here’s at least two problems with it.
1) When Productivity Isn’t That Productive
I think it was Francis Chan who once said: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
With all the demands on our schedule, we’re reminded that busyness doesn’t always equal real productivity. I could be “productive” at something that’s not that important. Really good at getting some things done, while neglecting the more important things. There’s always more to keep us occupied at a surface-level productivity, always more emails or laundry or homework, which we prefer over the big task. Because the big task is usually the most difficult and demanding, a big project, an intangible problem, the relational rift, the place where we don’t even know where to start.
Getting things done without intentional evaluation is like someone digging a huge ditch with a shovel. Are they productive? Perhaps. Is there a better, more productive way to dig a ditch? Definitely.
Worse is…
2) When Productivity Becomes A God
When two people meet for the first time, what usually the first question asked?
“What do you DO?”
Non-western cultures ask where you’re from. But we focus predominately on profession.
Alan Noble in his book You Are Not Your Own talks about how the modern world prioritizes (idolizes) efficiency above all else. “efficiency becomes the greatest good and a way of reassuring our conscience. . .the drive for maximizing efficiency in every activity is a considerable aspect of modern life.” He points out how so much of the language around improving the work environment, for example, is rooted not primarily in worker well-being, but in worker productivity. Unapologetically. “Treating workers well increased productivity. A happy worker is a productive worker.”
Human flourishing in the workplace is a means to the end of efficiency. “We want to take care of you, SO THAT YOU’RE EFFICIENT (and make us more money).”
And it’s not just the big, bad corporations, we do this too. We justify the extra sleep or a day off so that we can be more productive when we’re on. We allow ourselves to spend extra money on our health, not because we’re creatures made in God’s image, but so that we have more energy for efficiency.
The big lie underneath the productivity idol is “I am what I do.” That my value, my significance, my worth as a person, comes from how much I produce, achieve, accomplish. Batman said as much, with a mouthful of marbles: “It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.” We’ve all known for years that Batman needs to see a therapist.
Mary Bell provocatively put it like this: “Achievement is the alcohol of our time.” When life gets hard, some people turn to the bottle, some people to pornography, some people to food. But most of us turn to achievement. Getting stuff done is our coping mechanism to deal with, or really to NOT deal with deeper anxieties.
And what happens when I’m not producing anymore? When I’m sick or retired or fired or burned out? It’s heartbreaking how many people take their lives when they feel like they no longer contribute, when they feel like a burden. Productivity is a good gift, but a miserable master.
III. Something Better Than Productivity
I used to daily pray: “God, help me to be productive today.” And I don’t think that’s the worst prayer in the world. I was asking God for focus in a distracted world. But I started to wonder, considering the problems with productivity, is there a better way to think about this?
And then it clicked. The better, biblical category for work is not productivity, it’s fruitfulness.
In Genesis 1:28: God tells the humans to “be fruitful and multiply. . .” Genesis 2:15 says they’re role is to “work and watch over the garden.” To make babies and grow fruit. Sounds like heaven on earth!
But seriously, it’s a beautiful calling: to create and cultivate life. To be a blessing to the world.
Fruit is such a gift. My favorite argument against atheism is the raspberry. Eat a box of raspberries and tell me that God doesn’t love us. And there are over 2000 different kinds of fruit in the world. Isn’t that incredible? God’s candy speaks to his creativity.
Productivity language is rooted in machinery and assembly lines. But in ancient agricultural societies, fruitfulness language is rooted (pun intended) in gardens and orchards. It communicates abundance, blessing, joy, life, fullness. Think of a little girl holding a half a watermelon twice as big as her head, with joy and juice radiating off her face.
When we think of our work, our activity, paid or not, everything we do, what if we ran it all through the category of fruitfulness instead of the category of efficiency? Is what I’m doing fruitful? Important? Valuable? Purposeful?
The New Testament talks about both 1) ministry fruit and 2) character fruit.
1) Ministry fruit is the fruit of love and service, external. Paul says that he prayed for the Colossians, that they would be “bearing fruit in every good work.” (Col 1:10).
2) Character fruit is obviously internal, our development, maturity, and growth. Galatians 5:22-23a: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Good fruit indeed.
So I no longer pray: “Lord, help me to be productive today.” My new prayer is “Lord, make me fruitful.”
Sure, I want to be efficient and focused. But sometimes fruitfulness requires inefficiency.
Sometimes fruitful things don’t seem productive.
For example, maybe you’ll have a longer (fruitful) conversation with someone today, and so some other responsibilities (productivity) get neglected. Maybe you’ll turn off the podcast (productivity) to process a complex problem or fear (fruitful). Maybe you’ll get less done in a day (productivity) but add more value (fruit).
Sometimes fruitful things take a long time and aren’t easily measured. Slow, organic growth. As I’m looking out my window to a small apple tree I planted years ago, it’s still not ready to produce fruit. But the tree is healthy (I think) and growing, things are happening underneath the surface. Roots before fruit.
Let’s give the last words to Jesus:
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” -John 15:4-5
