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The Surprising Reason You Love Reading About Productivity
We’re addicted to the failure of 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 backward. 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.
