You want to get more done and wish you had more hours in a day. I hear you, lovely. We can all relate to feeling pressured to be productive so we can squeeze the most into our day, including:

     > keeping our refrigerator stocked and everyone we care about fed, safe, and feeling loved

     > moving our bodies, resting them, and feeding them nourishing foods 

     > caring for our home and working to make a positive contribution in the world

Isn’t it strange, though, that we’re the only beings on this planet who are so fixated on time, productivity, and fitting a million things into every minute?  (My cats and my son seem to think there are plenty of hours in a day.)

Have you ever considered that maybe there’s something more valuable and more worthy of our attention and focus than getting stuff done?  And trying so hard to be super productive can actually be counterproductive?

Time Freedom & The Productivity Paradox 

If there’s one lesson I keep learning over and over it’s that allowing myself to be “unproductive” is sometimes the best (and ironically, the most productive) thing I can do. 

I’ve had many “unproductive” days where I’ve gone to bed with an overflowing inbox, day-old dishes in the sink, and the feeling of “what the heck is wrong with me I used to be a productivity ninja!” in the pit of my stomach.

When I step back and look at the past six months as a whole though, the picture looks different: 

I coached amazing women, ran a monthly mastermind for big-hearted female entrepreneurs, and supported over 300 pregnant women to connect more deeply with their babies, birth, and motherhood.

 

I co-organized and facilitated a Passion.Presence.Purpose.Play retreat in Spain, led women’s circles and taught kundalini yoga classes on 3 continents. 

 

I prepared two manuscripts for peer review that have been published in a leading academic journal, and contributed to a toolkit for community health workers working with children and adolescents.

 

I led a laughter yoga session in a senior home with a beautiful group of individuals and as a family we supported our community with soup kitchens, donations, and taking a homeless family into our home.

 

I created a meditation video bundle, birth visioning kit, mindful motherhood course, and Conscious Mama TV. I also wrote my first kundalini krunk song and shared it on stage and in a recording studio. 

 

I learned how to speed read, get to inbox zero, and make peace with my anger while dancing more than I’ve danced in years – flash mobs, ecstatic dance, bhangra, and with my son dangling on my back (the monkey dance). 

 

I spent two weeks in Barcelona learning, playing, and co-creating with #MindvalleyU, one week camping with my son at a yoga festival, and one week immersed in sisterhood and yoga at Woman’s Camp in New Mexico. 

 

I flew across the world to attend one of my best friends’ wedding and spent time with family in Portugal, the west coast in the U.S., the winelands in South Africa, tucking my son into bed, and snuggling with my husband on our cat scratched couch munching late night popcorn. 

I’m not sharing this to show you that I can do it all perfectly – I have an amazing support system that makes this possible, and there are still many imperfect days. I am sharing the above so you can see the amazing things that have happened despite what felt like a string of unproductive days and despite my decision to throw my previous obsession with maximizing productivity out the window. 

On the days I relapsed into the seductive whirlwind of squeezing in as much as possible, I ended up sleep deprived, crankypants, hangry, and feeling like a crappy mama, wife, and being. The other day I even tripped and hit my head against a garden chair. 

It was only on the days when I released the need to fit it all in and stopped racing against time that things happened with ease. This was a great reminder that time freedom goes way beyond productivity.

Four Ways It Can Be Counterproductive to Focus on Being Productive

1. Focusing on productivity can set you up for failure, making it hard to do anything well

Just when you think you’re being all smarty pants and getting better at juggling a million things to get them all done, there’s always more that could’ve been done right?  If only you were quicker, brighter, more tech savvy, had 8 arms, a self-sufficient child, and mastered the latest time management app then maybe you’d get it all get done…

The truth? You’d still lie awake in bed thinking about how you could’ve done more and the next day you push yourself to do even more to compensate. When you’re living in “not enough” land, sleep gets compromised, meals get improvised,  and time doing what you love with those you love gets sacrificed. 

The world starts spinning, you lose your footing, and your ability to get anything useful done goes out the window. You end up running on empty or running on crazy, and you beat yourself up some more for being so slow. When you tie your self-worth to productivity no one wins. The guilt and shame only suck you deeper into the downward spiral of I’m failing. 

2. Obsessing over getting things done can disconnect you from what really matters

When you’re busy getting things done all the time it’s easy to overlook the beauty in your life. It’s hard hop off the do-do-do treadmill to celebrate what you’ve done and feel grateful for what you have.

Not only does the productivity hustle prevent us from ever feeling fulfilled or like we’ve accomplished anything, it keeps us from experiencing happiness because we can’t do happy – we can only be happy.

When we’re doing all the time it’s hard to be anything because we can’t give ourselves time to be with and experience our emotions.  While this can be convenient to avoid difficult emotions, it also disconnects us from happiness, love, connection, and fulfilment.

It also keeps us from spending time on the seemingly unproductive things that bring us joy, such as random adventures or nurturing relationships and being present with those we love. In the mad rush, we can lose sight of these priorities. When life’s hectic, these moments are even more special because they make it all worth it.

3. Relentless doing negatively impacts your body, energy levels, and performance

Despite the expectations you place on yourself, humans are not built to be non-stop doing machines living in a stress fueled pressure cooker.

Without rest and downtime, our bodies are constantly releasing the stress hormone cortisol, compromising our immune, digestive, nervous, and endocrine systems. Our body starts retaining weight, our energy dwindles, our sex drive disappears, and our bodies require caffeine and sugar to keep up.

When we’re feeling the pressure and stress of time, the creative higher centers of our brain shut down and our minds start having more difficulty focusing, integrating information, and making decisions. We also struggle to tap into our intuition.

All of this undermines our ability to be productive, as well as creative and in “peak performance” mode. There’s a very good reason top athletes take rest days when they’re training – downtime is essential to avoid physical and mental fatigue and by nature we’re meant to cycle between periods of activity and inactivity. The key is finding the right balance and rhythm of productivity and pause.

We can only be truly productive when we set aside time each day to pause and be “unproductive.” Sitting still is sometimes the most productive thing you can do.

4. Fixating on productivity cuts you off from universal productivity + the ability to bend time

Sometimes we need to eat some humble pie and recognize that there’s a higher form of “productivity” that transcends time and space, and is far from linear, strategic, or rational.

A serendipitous encounter, a random opportunity, or a spark of inspiration can put you in arms reach of your goals years earlier than you could’ve ever reached them by following a linear path of ticking off your to do list and executing your well thought out plans perfectly.

Call it magic, miracles, synchronicity, God, divine inspiration, alignment, or luck – this universal productivity accelerator is the juicy stuff that allows us to accomplish amazing things in a short space of time with much less effort. This enables us to bend time as well as experience more flow, when time feels like it stands still and we accomplish in one hour what would’ve otherwise taken us several weeks. 

When we’re too busy getting things done we aren’t able to tap into this goodness because we’re just too busy (and exhausted) to notice these chance encounters and flashes of inspiration. 

Only when we stop racing against time and start embracing time can we start creating and bending time – experiencing more flow and true time freedom. It’s in surrendering our obsession with being productive that we are finally able to create space for what matters.

How to Release the Productivity Hustle so You Can Create Time

My plan was to share with you five ways to ditch the productivity hustle, but let’s be honest – you’ve read all the way down here, you’re busy, and if left to your own devices you probably won’t try them.  

Instead, let’s hop on a quick call and I’ll help you identify one simple, personalized way you can create more time freedom (tailored to your exact needs so you don’t waste any time). You want more hours in a day – consider this my gift to you, lovely.  

Click here to book a Time Freedom Session > Create more space! 

(This one’s on me because I’ve got all the time in the world for you)

#99ProblemsButTimeAintOne