Productivity Insights Archives - Parts with Presley

The Anti-Capitalist Case for Productivity

I’ve done a lot of anti-capitalist organizing over the years, so it can raise an eyebrow or two when I tell my friends that I’ve become a productivity coach. Have I bought into the idea that your worth is based on how productive you are? Have I sold out and started helping bosses exploit their workers?

Fortunately, the answer is no. I don’t care how many widgets per hour you produce, how much share holder value you create, or what the GDP is. I would love to see a decrease in the standard workweek, an increase in paid leave, and universal benefits good enough that people could survive without a job.

But I also love getting stuff done. And I’m pretty sure everyone does, under the right circumstances.

How to Stop Procrastinating

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series How Procrastination Works

To understand how to stop procrastinating, we need to understand the anatomy of procrastination. And that anatomy is a lot like the anatomy of a weed.

Think of your schedule as a garden. You plant different kinds of activities in it, and some of them bear useful fruit, and others, like pretty flowers, are just enjoyable. Procrastination is like a weed growing in that garden. It steals your time and energy from better pursuits just like weeds steal sunlight and soil nutrients from more desirable plants.

And procrastination has three layers, just like a plant has leaves, stems, and roots. Let’s look at each of these layers to learn how to uproot procrastination.

Why You Procrastinate

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series How Procrastination Works

In order to make time for the things that matter to you most, you need to be able to do the intimidating, boring, and unpleasant tasks on your to do list without wasting hours working up the nerve to do them. You need to be able to get stuff done.

You can think of the process of getting stuff done as a process of driving a car from Ideatown to Accomplishmentville. If you’re procrastinating, you’re not arriving in Accomplishmentville with enough time to park, breathe a contented sigh, and have a night out on the town.

Somewhere along the way, you’re getting stuck or sidetracked.

Do You Procrastinate?

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series How Procrastination Works

Does this sound like you?

You have an unstructured or flexible work schedule

You might be:

an individual contributor in tech
a solopreneur, or
a writer

You have big dreams about how to spend your time

If you could get your work done efficiently, you would:

learn how to do it even better and move up in the world
spend more quality time with your family and friends
take better care of your body
finally get your side project off the ground,
make incredible art, and/or
spend more time volunteering to make this world less of a dumpster fire

But you can’t seem to stay on task

How to Have a Breakthrough: Memory Reconsolidation

Emotional learnings keep us safe

Imagine your great-great-etc grandparent, a hunter-gatherer, stumbling across a new type of berry. Is it a good source of energy? Or poison? They take a risk and taste a tiny bit—AGH! It tastes terrible. They’re probably tasting the bitterness of toxic alkaloids and would get sick if they ate more. Fortunately, the human brain adapted to protect them from making that mistake more than once. They’ve just acquired the emotional learning “this kind of berry is bad for me.” It’s an emotional learning because they learned it in the presence of the strong emotion of revulsion.

Unlike the facts you crammed for your history test, emotional learnings die hard. Imagine that years later, your ancestor came across the same type of berry, and, like you in your history test, they’ve forgotten their mental diary entry of the day they first found this berry. (They would remember it if prompted, but it’s not “active” right now.) Consciously, they don’t see anything wrong with this berry. But subconsciously, their emotional learning is guiding them. Their stomach gets a little queasy. Something feels off. They lose their appetite and decide not to try the berry. Their emotional learning is keeping them safe from illness even without their conscious awareness of it.

Why you don’t need more willpower

If you’re considering coaching, it’s probably because you do things you wish you didn’t do. Well, that’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, you’re the boss of you, right? Why do anything you don’t want to do? Stop hitting yourself!

Just kidding. Your plight makes perfect sense if we rephrase “you do things you wish you didn’t do” as “the subconscious parts of you do things the conscious parts of you wish they didn’t do.” When you think about yourself, it’s your conscious parts doing the thinking, so it’s easy to confuse “yourself” with just “the conscious parts of you.” That leaves the actions of your subconscious parts as this annoying mystery:

“Why do I waste time on the internet when the task in front of me is really important?”

“Why do I turn down a job interview that would be a great opportunity?”

“Why do I agree to do a task that isn’t my job even after telling myself I’m going to stand firm this time?”