It’s time to redefine productivity – before it’s too late

I recently took a five-hour flight from DC to San Diego. Normally, on long flights I use that time to write, journal, catch up on work, and generally be productive.

This time I watched Shakespeare in Love. Again.

About five minutes into the movie, I noticed I was feeling a bit guilty, like I should be working – being productive – instead of slacking off for a movie I’ve already seen.

Then, I thought, “What the heck is that all about anyway, and what does ‘being productive’ actually mean?”

For some, being productive means staying busy or checking off the to-do list. For others, it’s getting ahead or moving one step closer to a goal.

Whatever it is, I have the sneaking suspicion that, like me, you have a culturally/parentally/self-imposted belief that productivity is measured by how much you accomplished, or how much you fit into your day.

But I feel like we’re missing something here.

What if we measured productivity not by what we’ve done with our day, but whether we had enough fun?

I can hear the responsible adult in your head now… “Fun? What about pushing forward, making money, sweating a little, edging closer to your goals, growing the business, cleaning the house, working out, clearing out the inbox, and making those calls?”

Yes. Fun.

Like watching a movie you’ve already seen and enjoying every familiar second of it.

Gap Insight: We tend to believe that by placing fun at the top of the priority list, we’re being irresponsible. But what if it was irresponsible not to?

The Productivity Trap

From the time we are children, we’re rewarded for doing, achieving, or producing.

It was all about earning good grades, blue ribbons, college acceptance letters, a decent job, promotions, and glowing performance reviews.

The message arrives so early and so consistently that most of us never stop to question it: A productive day is a good day. A busy life is a full and meaningful life.

Maybe it is. But after working with leaders and high achievers for several decades now, I’ve seen something that troubles me deeply.

I see amazing, extraordinarily capable, well-intentioned people — executives, parents, athletes, coaches, leaders of all kinds — who have become so efficient at living that they have forgotten what it’s like to be fully alive.

Their calendars are feats of optimization, their minds are masters of discipline, and their lives are precisely planned to the minute.

But somewhere underneath all of it – the missed dinners with family, the late work nights, the weekend stress they never quite shake – a distant voice keeps asking a question they don’t stop to answer until it’s too late:

Am I enjoying all this and am I having any fun?

Gap Insight: Fun is a moving target. What was fun when you were a kid or an adolescent may not be fun as an adult. What was fun five years ago may not be fun anymore. You, and only you, get to decide what fun is now.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

I pose a question during my workshops for the CEOs I have the privilege of working with:

What do you plan to do after you retire?

The overwhelming answer is something along the lines of, “I’m going to enjoy myself.”

So, I grab the pen and the whiteboard and do some math.

Let’s say you started working at 25 and retire at 65. That’s forty years of work.

The average life span for men is 76 and for women, 81.

That means that if you’re a man and retire at 65, you have 11 years to enjoy your life after work – assuming you’re healthy up until your last day.

11 years.

Is that the plan? To wait until you can finally let go of being productive to begin to finally and enthusiastically enjoy your life?

Don’t. Wait.

After all, when you’re old and gray, what will you remember and cherish most?

The inbox you cleared? The meetings you ran efficiently? The tasks you checked off? The quarterly numbers you hit?

Or will you remember the afternoons you laughed with friends until you couldn’t breathe? The mornings you hiked deep into the wilderness and felt at one with nature? The intimate conversations with your spouse? The moments you felt, however briefly, completely alive?

Gap Insight: The moments you are the most alive are the ones you’re the most present. When you’re having fun, you’re both.

5 Ways to Become More “Profunductive”

Once you’ve decided to make more aliveness your aim and add the fun back into productivity (become profunductive), it helps to follow these steps:

1. Redefine what a productive day looks like.

At the end of each day, most of us hold ourselves accountable to an unconscious standard. Did I get enough done? Did I use my time well? Was I efficient?

When we don’t pass our own productivity assessment, we often feel guilty, lazy, or somehow flawed.

Try replacing your old, outdated productivity audit with a different set of questions:

• How much of my day did I truly enjoy?
• What was I really present for?
• Did I connect genuinely with another person?
• Did I experience anything beautiful, funny, or moving?
• How alive did I feel today?

2. Schedule enjoyment with the same seriousness you schedule everything else.

We protect our meetings, our deadlines, and our bottom lines.

We almost never protect the walk, the meal, the conversation, the precious time with friends, the hour of reading, the afternoon with no agenda.

So those things disappear because we don’t defend them. They’re always the first thing cut when the calendar gets crowded.

Put them in the calendar and treat them as non-negotiable. Not because you have earned them as a reward for being productive, but because they are the whole point.

3. Practice the art of presence.

Multitasking isn’t efficiency, it’s the fragmentation of presence.

When you’re half-working and half-paying attention to your spouse, you’re doing neither well, nor are you truly enjoying either one (and trust me, they always notice when you aren’t present).

Pick one thing. Be entirely there for it. Whether it is a conversation, a meal, a walk, or a work task, give it all of you.

4. Ask the old person’s question more often.

Before you fill your weekend with errands, your evening with catch-up work, or your vacation with your laptop, pause and ask the question your older self will one day be able to answer with certainty:

Will this matter to me when I look back?

Not everything needs to pass that test. Errands exist. Work bleeds into evenings sometimes. Obligations beckon.

But asking the question regularly reminds you that you are not just managing time, you are consciously choosing how to spend it according to what sounds enjoyable, personally meaningful and fun.

5. Write down 5 things that sound fun this week and this year.

Intentionally choose five things that sound enjoyable, make them into a checklist, and check them off throughout your week.

In addition, write down 5 things that sound fun this year and check them off as you go.

This is where you get to plan, imagine, and create sustainable short and long-term enjoyment while making fun a part of the master plan for your life.

Gap Insight: Learning to have more fun is a skill that requires intention and practice. But that’s also the fun of it.

The Bottom Line

Stop waiting to have fun and enjoy your life until you have been productive enough to deserve it.

You already deserve it. You have always deserved it.

The idea that enjoyment must be earned through output is one of the most persistent and most damaging lies modern culture tells, and most of us have been living by it for so long that we’ve forgotten that it isn’t true.

Your days are not valuable because of what you produced in them. They are valuable because they were enjoyable and you were alive in them.

The obligations, responsibilities, and work will always be there.

Just remember to intentionally build in the time to enjoy yourself, and your life, along the way.

See you inside the gap.

Yours in health and aliveness, David