30. On Productivity

The word productivity dominates the modern age and forms its imperative. Productivity must go up. When discussing the production of physical goods, productivity is easy to measure. The output of farmlands and factories, where, as a general rule, the production of more things is good in itself (I will exclude luxury products and other exceptions for this argument). Productivity however has travelled the factory and farmland down to the individual. Now, we are all meant to be productive citizens, productive workers, productive individuals whose life is meant to be an upward arc of increased productivity until presumably retirement or death.

How do we measure an individual’s productivity, however? While physical productivity might still be a useful metric in some scenarios, most live in an age where the production of physical goods to get by is irrelevant. This does not mean that physical production is not important, it will always be, but rather that, taking the example of a farm, the same work previously done by a hundred men can now be done by ten, leaving the other ninety to do other work, often involving the non-physical creation of things. However, this non-output labour poses a problem with the definition of productivity. Is it productive to send more emails or to host more meetings? Is it productive to output more reports, write more code, or produce more paintings—is it productive to do more for the sake of doing something?

The idea of individual productivity comes with another association often tied to the term success. Productivity is often tied to success. And to be successful is to be productive. Yet, how should I measure the productivity of the creative field, which is growing exponentially in the age of social media under the idea of content. Do we measure the success of a YouTube star by the number of videos produced in quick succession? Is productivity an important measure of success here? No, we would quickly feel that this is wrong (and usually other metrics are involved, such as view counts). We do not measure Bach’s or Beethoven’s success by their productivity (although they were productive) but rather by the scope and power of their work. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies (each a revelation), but this does not make him a lesser composer than Haydn who wrote over a hundred nor does this make him greater than Tchaikovsky who only wrote 6 (7 if we include the Manfred symphony). This measurement is a strange one, many would agree. Why then does it seem we are obsessed with maximizing productivity in our present age. Where the success model is the hardworking individual who sacrifices their time and health to do more. Not to create something great, it is rather the ethos of more is more that is worshipped. More time spend and more things done equals success. Have we lost the idea of quality?

Productivity in a similar vein, as producing large quantity of work(s), is not so relevant for accumulating other types of capital, particularly social or cultural. For cultural capital the opposite might hold true. Better to produce a few highly esteemed works (esteemed here by a select group of people rather than the masses) than to produce an array of lesser art. So too for social capital as we are judged for the company we keep and the matters we attend to, even the most debased of character might think twice before attending a gathering of people whose believes run contrary to their character. To gather non-financial capital, therefore, one must be selective. But a similar argument can be made with financial capital because those who work smart, not hard have much to gain. There is no disagreement that working smart is a wise thing to do and not to devote undue time to things that do not require devotion. Nevertheless, even those who work smart will often find themselves pursuing some vague idea late into the night with some distant notion of capital accumulation where the promise they have been sold is that happiness and success awaits them if they only bear this moment and sacrifice their time (and perhaps more devasting their spirit and ideas) for the sake of the creation of abstract value which might turn into some form of capital.

The idea of more is more, which is inherent in productivity, finds its sublime expression in the social media age, where we gauge our success in terms of likes, subscribers, followers, and viewers. Here, it is not the work in question that is important but rather its perceived success in sense of being watched by many. This success is then valorised by award shows, sponsorship deals and others who in a circular logic, legitimize the success through viewership. If something is watched, then there must be something good about it, the logic goes. We live in the age of the popular, where the popular is its own good. This is a marked change of the age of the Romantic only a long century ago where the idea of success and the popular might be anathema to the creative who would rather be at their peak pursuing some sublime artistic ideal, often to their own ruin.

Hard work is still valuable of course. Many an artist have laboured to create what we now call masterworks. Look only at the composition sketches Beethoven left us to see the process one must go through to make things appear as they should be. To create a complete work that appears as the only possible version of the work one must channel their productivity into a single creative output. But this type of productivity many might deride today as being a waste of time, as the result might not result in the accumulation of the right type of capital, as if that is the only end goal of any type of productivity. Perhaps this is what this essay is trying to get at. That productivity is too often tied to the increase of financial capital. That the discussion of productivity is limited to economy, and that economy is limited to the discussion of increase in numbers that do not mean anything in the final tally. In the era of capital accumulation productivity is generally tied to wealth and to be productive in work becomes solely for the purpose of accumulating wealth.

Aside from the ties of productivity with value (or wealth), another aspect of productivity that is often brought together is output. A cleaner who works beyond their designated workload might be called a productive cleaner. Yet while we place great value on clean rooms, as we do on other things in our use spaces (maintained roads, working plumbing, well-stocked groceries), cleaners are not esteemed as those that produce wealth. (Cleaners might increase the wealth of an area, as part of infrastructure which is never productive but simply is). An extra-productive cleaner who goes above and beyond their job duties might be admonished for wasting productive energy in something that does not help in accumulating wealth for themselves. While the ethos of productivity teaches us that we can overcome our means, our starting point as long as we are more productive than in the past, this productivity must be well-placed. The pursuit of productivity for many leads to constant stress as there is a continuing demand to surpass the year before. It also leads to anxiety for does on pursue the right things that will pay off, or am I like the cleaner placing too much effort in things that might not end up as worthwhile. Making matters worse, productivity is often employed for the sake of others, as most are in some abstract constellation where our loyalty is contracted off in intervals

Let me end this cursory exploration here with a call for us to reclaim productivity. Let us measure (if we must measure at all) our productivity according to our own terms. Let us reject this word altogether if we wish to. Let us move back to a different mode of being where taking time or doing a few things well is as esteemed as doing many things at once. To reject the ethos of productivity is to reject the ethos of modernity, the measurable, the economic, the idea that things will always be better and numbers always go up. To live with an idea of continuous improvement is to live with continuous disappointment as well. Does human well-being continuously improve after certain base conditions are met? Do the citizens of well-off countries live in a continuous bliss? They should not and they cannot. The ethos of productivity should be replaced with an idea of well enough. Let us aim to be satisfied. We have done enough, I have my daily bread and my walks, and perhaps I have my books and some forms of entertainment, let this be well enough.

[These essays were written the past years as writing and thinking practice. I have revised them to be somewhat presentable. They do often meander and perhaps do not add up to much of anything.]