Productivity: Is it leading Americans to Happier Lives?

I love feeling productive, and I know I'm not the alone in this. There are countless apps, guides, tips, tricks, and hacks all designed to help us be more productive. Why be productive? So you can spend your time happily doing what you want. But does the pursuit of productivity guarantee a happier life? I don't know, but some of my less ambitious friends seem to be very happy. So let's have a chat.

Music by Mound City by Coleman Hawkins (recorded 1929)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

After all, when you're able to do exactly what you want, whenever you want, does it really lead to a better life? Does it lead to happiness? I'm the lovely Ray, and I'm delighted to spend a little time with you today. I was born and raised in the U.S., but over the past few years, I've been fortunate enough to spend some time chatting online with people from all over the world. Thanks to a little website called Cambly. I don't have any strong opinions about the Cambly English Learning Platform. But my conversations with folks from other countries have left me with a lot to think about. So, in this podcast, I thought I'd share a little with you and maybe we can keep the conversation going. Morning. This podcast is about stepping down and having real conversations. So, if you're looking for someone to dress things up, well, as the old saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. I save my lipstick for the stage, dearest, and dressing up for the bedroom. I do not dress up my conversations with friends. So I'd love to have a chat. Welcome back, darlings. It's delightful to have this opportunity to chat with you. Speaking of chats, I had a lovely little chat the other day with a friend of mine in Turkey. Now, I think it should be warranted to state up front that there is an age difference between me and my friend. She's in her mid-twenties and well, let's just say I'm not. So we were talking and in our English lesson we came across a question which I asked her. And the question was what are your career goals? Where do you see yourself in the future? And her response, Ray, I love to have a position as a manager. My dears. I think I yes, just for a moment. You see, when I was her age, I was running my own business on top of working a full-time job, and I also ran ten different websites for ten different brands, all of them my own by way. I had the occasional assistant, but I had big dreams. The idea of just stopping at management was not something I was willing to consider. I wanted to have my own artistic I dare say empire. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with her dream and I did applaud her for it. Then I found myself thinking Am I dreaming too big? Or is she dreaming too small? Now, to be fair, our next question Is your dream achievable? What would you need to do in order to reach your goal? And for my friend, achieving her goal was within one to two years. But given that I started on my journey to artistic success several years ago. I had to ask myself, had I reached the pinnacle of what I'd hoped to achieve? Hmm. Now there's a question. But darling, this episode is not about me. I actually want to talk about productivity because you see, I don't know about you, but I spent a good amount of years listening to the good people of social media on YouTube in my social media feeds, letting me know that I was wasting time. I could do more, be more, reach those goals, achieve great things all by being more productive. There's no wasting time scrolling through TikTok. We've got things to do, mountains to climb, bills to pay, awards to win. So tell me baby, are you a productivity junkie? Have you read all the books? Have you figured out how to automate your habits with atomic habits? Have you figured out how to work a four hour day thanks to your old buddy Tim? I do wonder if perhaps you're down to a four hour work week. Do you no longer live for the weekend because you're able to plan your life in a way that allows you to do exactly what you want when you want. Just like you always dreamed of as a child. Speaking of children, let me take a moment to mention the tale you may have read about when you were a child. Or perhaps you read the book itself. The Lord of the Flies does it ring a bell? Hmm, yes. So this book, commonly read by children in middle school, is a tale of a group of young boys stranded on an island, and they have an opportunity to live their lives without the constraints of rules placed on them by adults. And very quickly they soon realize that in order to prevent descending into chaos and madness, rules must be applied and obeyed. Now, I'm not gonna spoil the book for you, honey, if you haven't read it. I, for one, don't like the book, but I do appreciate its place in the realm of great literature. I do appreciate the author's writing, and I like the messages it sends. But the target for this book is young boys, and I am not an adolescent boy in case you haven't figured that out. With that being said, the cautionary tale that it does provide applies to our discussion of productivity. After all, when you're able to do exactly what you want whenever you want, does it really lead to a better life? Does it lead to happiness? Hey, my Turkish friend is happy going to work and coming home and doing whatever she does in her downtime, and she very much enjoys her weekend. In fact, she's always happy. But I'm starting to wonder what do they put in the water in Turkey? Because every Turkish person that I've chatted with online seems to be extremely happy. Could I also say that they were extremely productive? Perhaps not. They go to work, maybe make some time to chat with me online, and spend time with friends or family. There's no mention of side hustles. There's no mention of building artistic empires. And so this all has me thinking, is the fascination with productivity something that is relegated to social norms in the US? Does it apply abroad the borders of the United States? I find myself thinking of all the hours that I spent trying numerous methods, numerous apps, various task lists and charts, checklists, trying to figure out well, this person recommends using Notion, this person recommends using Evernote, this person has a mole skin, this person uses Google Calendar, and now AI is supposed to solve all my problems. And yet, throughout it all, am I more productive? Are you more productive? Do we even need to be more productive? I mean, let's face it, there is something to be said for simply being able to relax, for not running around trying to find the next side hustle in order to what? Pay those debts, invest in real estate, retire early. What are we being productive for? Why are we so fascinated with not wasting time? It is interesting, at least to me, because it wasn't that long ago when we were all crying. We want a shorter work week. We want to have more time to spend with friends and family, more time to do what we want. Have you asked yourself if you actually had a shorter work week, fewer obligations, would you really be able to spend that extra time being more productive? And what does being more productive look like anyway? For some, being more productive means finally starting that business they've always dreamed of. For others, being productive might mean spending more time with friends or family, and still for others, productivity may be surrounded by paying closer attention to self-care. But when it really comes down to it, how many hours of your day are spent doing the things you don't want to? Doing things that might be deemed unproductive or doing things that are simply preventing you from doing the things that you really want to do. It's a bit of a tangled web. We weave when we start to dance the dance with productivity. And I, for one, have been in quite the tangle for a very long time. Now I can confess that I've been fortunate enough to have achieved a lot of things artistically, and yet every time I try to strip away some of the things that tie up my time, I do find new ideas blossoming, flourishing, growing. Hence that free time is now filled with something else. And it is the dance with productivity in which I must dance in order to figure out how I will squeeze in all of my passions, all of my loves. Have you faced this issue as well, my dear? Perhaps. Or perhaps you find yourself currently engaged in a different kind of dance. A dance with you might say the devil. Well, maybe what's stopping you? Is it moral obligation, social obligation, emotional constraints that tell you, no no, don't be selfish. Be here. This is what you have to do to survive. This is what good people do. This is how life should be lived. Or perhaps, perhaps, deep down, you really like that job. You really like that family. You really like your friends. Maybe the problem isn't what surrounds you. The problem isn't what you've built. The problem is knowing that you want to build more. And so you find yourself wondering, are you truly being productive? Are you using your time in the best manner that you could? Well, if you are frightened, worried, sad that your usage of time is not up to par, that you could do better, don't worry, baby. There's always an app for that. There's always another book to read, a another video to click on, and to get tips on how you two can be more productive. You know, I have to wonder about these people who are willing to guide me to productivity bliss. It wasn't long ago when we were all told to go work for Uber, go do DoorDash. You too can reach your goals faster by having a little side job. And was it before that we were all supposed to become drop shipping experts? In just a few clicks, you can go on five or have someone create a website for you, select products on Alibaba, and then Paresto Change O Boom Shabang, you too will be rolling in the drop shipping dough and be a millionaire. And was it before that when we were all told we could start t-shirt businesses, print on demand, make some cool designs online or have a catchy phrase, and with just the click of a button, people can purchase the t-shirt and you too would be guided to riches that would allow you to use your time as you wish because this is what productivity bliss looks like. And I have to wonder, at what point did we all decide to become life coaches? I'm gonna say it was after the t-shirt hustle, maybe around the time of the real estate craze, or perhaps a little later. Oh yes, you know what I mean. In the US, so popular for all of us to buy real estate. Maybe you don't have the money to buy a property, but you can rent out a room in your home or in your apartment, and voila, you can find yourself listing on Airbnb. Take in strangers, make lots of money, and soon you'll have a lot of extra money to then buy that first property. Or better yet, you own your home. Why not take out a HELOC and add a little ADU in the back? Use that extra abode to take in people from Airbnb. And so now you've got riches flowing your way. Better yet, why don't you live in the smaller property, rent out the main house, and you can live off of their money, it will fuel your retirement. Yeah. Of course, when people were finding themselves in cities in which there were too many Airbnbs, and cities were passing legislation saying, no, no, no, no, this is not okay. The hotels are having issues, and some of these Airbnbs are not only not up to code, but they are simply dangerous. Why is it that the homeowner has decided to sneak into the bed of the person simply renting a room for a night? Okay, I like Airbnb, I've got no qualms there. But we've all heard at least one Airbnb disaster story. And if you haven't, baby, you can look it up online. There were a number of people, especially during 2020, who found themselves struggling financially because they were saddled with this real estate investment that they could not rent out. And that is not good for a real estate investor. And for those of you who have been busy with your side hustle, drop shipping, well, you may have noticed that there's a lot of competition out there, and not everybody wants to buy shitty designs. And for those of you who were running around, driving Uber, doing the DoorDash, you may have soon realized the market was flooded with not only. More drivers, but also the addition to more companies offering similar services, and so now the oversaturated market means less money for you. Not to mention, you're always tired, and find yourself either spending more money to grab a snack on the go, or you are spending more time running that side hustle, and simply less time being able to take that money to do the things you want to do. And so time spent wisely? Possibly. After all, you're not scrolling social media, you're being productive, you're going out there, you're doing things, you're making it happen, but at what cost? Hmm. Yeah. At what cost? If it's costing you more emotionally, financially, or time-wise, then was that really being productive?

unknown 23:21

After all.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Isn't productivity about producing more? Are you a hamster on the wheel, simply spinning your wheel? Or are you inching forward on the path in which you want? Now, don't be mad. Don't be mad at me. Because I've done just about every single side hustle that I've named and a few more. Alas, I cannot say that the side hustle phase in America has gone away. Yes, we want to work from home, we want shorter work weeks, but at the same time, we're still being told to side hustle. And if you were one of the poor souls who invested your money into a coaching program only to find yourself without people to coach? Well, it is a lesson learned because there are tons of coaches out there for a lot of different areas in life, and only people who have a good amount of income are going to be able to afford a coach for all the various areas in which they seek to achieve greatness. So the service that you're offering, you have to market it to those people who have the financial resources to invest in your talents. It's not easy. It's not easy being productive. It's not easy dreaming big, wanting more, reaching for the stars. Or maybe it's easier than you think. Maybe everything you want is all within reach. You just need to change the direction in which you're reaching. Maybe you and I need to take a little lesson from my friends in Turkey. Or maybe we just need a new app. Well, my friends, I hope this is giving you a little something fun to think about. Until next time, it's been lovely shouting with you.