“Personal productivity presents itself as an antidote to busyness when it might better be understood as yet another form of busyness.”
There are some very interesting points in this Guardian article, relating to productivity and procrastination. Focusing on how I do my work, rather that actually getting on and doing it, is something I'm certainly aware of doing myself. It's even something the very people who have come up with the productivity techniques we strive for are concerned about, eg Merlin Mann, who came up with the system of Inbox Zero.
Time to read is seen as a luxury, a flower broken by the storm. The first thing we lose under pressure is discretionary time, and yet without this investment in ourselves, we are destined, forever, to be ourselves. To deny the opportunity to become the person who we have the potential to be. To grow is to thrive. If we lose ourselves in the busyness of the everyday, we are simply surviving.
At the end of the Time Off episode 10 Actions From 2018 there's some bonus content, Tim Kreider's audio essay on busyness. It's similar, although not identical to his 2012 opinion piece in The New York Times.
This quote stood out to me. He's right, time and quiet, space to think, should not be luxuries. We need to be able to build this into our daily lives. It's a theme I'll be thinking and writing more about this year.
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.