Day 56: Counter-Productivity

Around brunch today on my way to work (I am semi-retired after all), I was feeling tired, agitated, and rushed. I haven't had enough down time in weeks what with moving, conflict resolution training, etc. I was feeling so emotional and out of sorts that I wouldn't have gone in to work at all, but there was someone coming in today that couldn't reschedule. On the bus I was feeling quite sad, and really didn't know how I was going to be productive at work. As soon as I got there, however, something shifted inside of me. I felt relieved, and wholly focused the entire time I was there. Like, eerily focused. Like more focused than my computer. Eager to avoid processing uncomfortable feelings, my brain leaped overzealously into the distraction of the work day.

So, rather than viewing today as "extremely productive" as I would normally have characterized it given how many things I crossed off my To Do list at work, I am thinking of it instead as counter-productivity. I have always seen myself as valuing productivity, but when I am "producing" a disconnected brain cut off from my emotional reality, something is wrong. Counter-productivity is Doing at the expense of Being. The work culture of the US is predicated on the belief that productivity at work is the greatest good, and that one's emotional life should never effect the work world at all. No one should ever know how you are feeling at work and you should consistently get the same amount done each day regardless of anything that may be happening in your personal life. The word productivity is due for an updated definition, one that rejects the production of unneeded and unwanted material objects, and instead embraces the creation of new ways of being and thinking, immaterial products, a definition that measures the creation of feelings, states of being, peace, calm, joy and happiness.