The Surprising Reason You Love Reading About Productivity
There’s a concerning trend that powers a huge subset of the content being clicked on, read, and shared these days. I’ll call it ‘productivity-bait’.
Why does productivity bait work so well?
The answer is simple but surprising.
We are addicted to the failure of our productivity.
Now, you might stop here and think, “hold up, he’s got it all backwards. Surely if we are addicted to anything, it’s to optimizing our productivity.” But no, I stand by what I said. Let’s take a step back and think this through in the form of a story.
It’s 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. Caroline is at a cafe doing freelance UX work. She’s committed to staying until 5 pm (for nothing other than the arbitrary reasoning that she wants to be able to tell herself that she has put in a ‘full day’s work’).
She’s already had two cappuccinos and a sandwich, and she’s jittery from the caffeine and not actually hungry, but she’s considering buying a brownie. The brownie seems like a good idea because she’s antsy, she can’t focus on her work, and she’d like something to distract herself with.
At 3:40 she goes to the bathroom, thinks “fuck it,” and buys the brownie. She gets back to her computer, opens her email, and follows an article recommendation for “5 ways to boost productivity now.” She feels a little thrill when she clicks the title. She takes a bite of the brownie. Her eyes whiz across the screen.
At the end of the article, she hasn’t learned anything new (most of these articles repeat the same hacks, slightly tweaked, over and over again), but she feels a burst of inspiration and excitement. Why?
Because by reading the article, she has put a box around the antsy, insecure, bored feeling of 3:30 and built a narrow, clearly delineated bridge between it and a better future self.
The future self will always be focused, always have energy, and always be clear-headed. The…
