Somewhere between the invention of the to-do list and the apocalypse of the push notification, “busy” became the most seductive adjective in the room. We used to flatter each other with, “You look well.” Now it’s, “You sound busy,” delivered with the same hushed reverence one might reserve for spotting a rare orchid in the wild. Busy is no longer a schedule; it’s a moral position. It implies usefulness, desirability, and a life in demand. If you’re not busy, are you even a person or merely furniture with opinions?
Listen to the way we confess it, breathless and proud: “It’s crazy right now.” “So slammed.” “Back-to-backs all day.” Our eyes widen, we nod gravely, and someone makes the sign of the calendar. We trade calendar links like teenagers swapping mixtapes. We praise each other’s suffering as if exhaustion were a philanthropic act. Busy has become the new humblebrag, except we’ve stopped bothering to be humble.
What we’ve created is not a culture of productivity; it’s a cult. And like all good cults, ours has a fetish at its center: the worship of efficiency for its own glossy sake. We don’t simply get things done; we venerate the performance of getting things done. The altar is crowded with ritual objects. Consider the sacred trinity: planner, app, sticky note. The planner must be linen-bound and tastefully minimal, the sort of object that whispers Scandinavian. It should promise that inside these pale pages lies a better self with clearer skin. The app must have a name like a woodland creature who freelances—Otter, Notion, Roam, Forest—as if productivity could be coaxed out of us by something adorable. And the sticky notes? They are the votive candles of our age, gently lighting the path to tasks we will absolutely, definitely do one day, possibly in an afterlife with looser deadlines.
Observe the morning ritual. The acolyte rises at an aggressively virtuous hour and opens the planner with a reverential sigh. A pen is uncapped. Titles are lettered in a font that suggests someone who both journals and knows where their passport is. A list is made, cross-referenced with the app, which pings to ask whether we’d like to hydrate, breathe, or “reconnect with our purpose” before 8 a.m. We check our phone. The phone checks us back. The watch taps our wrist to inform us that our heart rate is “elevated,” possibly because a device just tapped our wrist to tell us our heart rate is elevated. We reward ourselves with a sip of something that claims to be coffee but tastes like ambition and minor panic.
In this church of the perpetually occupied, even our bodies are managed projects. If you are not tracking, are you even alive? Steps, standing, sleep cycles, REM quality, heart-rate variability, the number of milliliters of water you have consumed in the last seven minutes—all glow in tiny graphs like stained glass for seculars. Hydration, once an act of putting water in yourself, now requires a fluorescent bottle that congratulates you for drinking. “Good job!” it beams, as if you’d just won a small war. We do breathing exercises our grandparents learned by simply existing outdoors. We lie flat on mats while apps guide us through “box breathing,” which sounds less like calm and more like something executed in a shipping container.
The merchandise table is the envy of any pilgrimage. There are habit trackers shaped like calendars and calendars shaped like self-respect. There are special pens that promise to boost your creativity, sharpen your focus, and definitely never go missing because you bought them in a three-pack for fourteen euros and they are infused with Intentionality. There are notebooks with pages that erase with steam, journals that require you to write the same gratitude sentence until you mean it, and timers that chunk your life into tomato-shaped units. If you truly love someone, you will buy them noise-canceling headphones so they can pursue their dreams inside a small, padded silence.
Of course, like any fetish, the details matter. The planner must be photographed at an artful angle beside a ceramic mug and a plant that has never known neglect. The app must report back with the blunt honesty of a Swiss train: “You were focused for 23 minutes.” We accept this with the shame of someone caught abandoning a salad for a croissant. The sticky note must be placed at eye level, where it will inspire, not accuse. If your sticky notes begin to look like a threatening flock of canaries, you have tipped from devotion into mania. This is normal. You are simply taking your practice seriously.
The language of the cult is telling. We don’t have tasks anymore; we have “priorities,” and several of them are “number one.” We don’t cancel plans; we “shift bandwidth.” We don’t say “I forgot”; we say “It fell off my radar,” as if our lives are air-traffic control and we are heroically preventing collisions between Pilates and a quarterly report. When we do nothing—glorious, delicious nothing—we must at least call it “white space,” which sounds deliberate and therefore billable.
The absurdities multiply with the enthusiasm of subscriptions. There is the habit tracker that reminds you to hydrate (what a world: we have become suspicious of our own thirst). There are focus modes that permit emails only from people who share DNA. There is the thriving genre of YouTube videos where well-lit humans explain—at great length—how they plan their planning. One would think after planning the plan they might, at some point, do the thing. But doing the thing is almost beside the point; the ceremony is the point. We love a ritual. It is soothing to believe that a system stands between us and chaos, that we are merely one well-designed template away from serenity.
Then there are the alarm clocks. One chimes like a Zen bell. Another simulates sunrise, confusing both you and your curtains. A third will not turn off until you solve a math problem—because nothing says “gentle start to the day” like algebra at 6:04. We layer on cold plunges for discipline, hot showers for reward, and tiny tablets of electrolytes that taste like ambition dissolved in a puddle. It is possible to spend so much time optimising your morning that it becomes evening, and your only achievement is a very well-managed sense of self.
The irony, of course, is that almost none of this is about the thing itself. Productivity, in its simplest form, means making something of value or finishing what you start. But our fetish flips the order. We pursue the aura of productivity: the hum, the click, the calendar full of decorative squares. We want the theatre of busyness, the pleasing friction of tasks sliding across a board from “To Do” to “Done” like obedient furniture. We frame our weeks like museum exhibitions: here is where I place Deep Work, here is my Break, here are the Small Things, which are never small because they metastasise and bring friends.
Sometimes I imagine a conversation between history and our present. History says, “We ploughed fields.” Present replies, “We colour-coded.” History says, “We built bridges.” Present says, “We installed an extension that blocks Instagram for 25 minutes.” History says, “We learned patience by living.” Present says, “I have an app that teaches me to wait.” History is confused. Present is also confused, but has a subscription to an app that makes being confused feel intentional.
We have, in short, eroticised the apparatus. The planner is lingerie for our day: most of its power lies in suggestion. The app is a whisper in our ear, promising we can be better if we surrender to its notifications. The sticky note is a flirtatious wink from the future where everything is miraculously finished. We believe, deeply, that if only we buy the right pen, align the right columns, find the right font, install the right widget, the engine of our life will purr. This belief persists despite repeated disconfirmation, like all deeply held beliefs. We remain unproductive the way gamblers remain unlucky: not wrong, just one tool away from redemption.
Beneath all the gear and glow, there is a quieter superstition. We suspect that stillness is dangerous. If we stop moving, the shape of our life might catch up with us and ask unwelcome questions. Who are you without your projects? What do you enjoy that has no metric? This is why we keep the treadmill humming. We tell ourselves it’s about excellence; often, it’s about evasion. Busy is a polite way to hide. Everyone approves. No one asks you to come over and sit on the floor and stare out the window together, which is a shame, because that’s where the better ideas tend to arrive, unpinged and untracked.
None of this is to scold the faithful. I, too, have bowed at the altar, forehead marked with the ink of an expensive pen. I have experienced the small religious ecstasy of dragging a digital card into the “Done” column and felt briefly absolved. I know several people who have bought a water bottle that glows when it is time to drink, and obey it like a devoted plant. They have instructed an app to lock them out of other apps and then found a way around it, which felt like escaping from a prison whose architect is them. They had scheduled rest and then resented it for being insufficiently productive.
But if this is a cult, perhaps the initiation is awareness. To notice the way we purr when someone praises our busyness. To grin at the absurdity of being congratulated by a bottle. To clock how quickly we reach for a ritual object when a day feels shapeless, because shape is a comfort and comfort is, frankly, delicious. Perhaps the first small heresy is to wear the planner less like armour and more like an accessory—useful, yes, but not a personality.
And if we must keep the fetish (humans are incurable collectors of meaning and stationery), we might at least enjoy it with a little wink. Colour-code your calendar if it delights you. Track your water if you’re parched. Set the sunrise lamp to something flattering. But let’s stop pretending the artifacts are the achievement. The point of the pen is the sentence. The point of the app is the thing you make when it’s quiet. The point of the sticky note is for it to end up in the bin, not multiply on your wall like aggressive wallpaper.
Until then, we will continue to meet each other in doorways and inboxes and say, with the cozy complicity of a secret handshake, “So busy.” And we will nod gravely, and we will mean “I see you.” Which, perhaps, is what we’ve wanted all along. Not a better system. Not a shinier app. Just the relief of recognition in a world that counts only what it can count. Busy is how we make ourselves visible. Stillness is how we learn to see.
Then and Now
If you want a true productivity seminar, forget the guy on YouTube with neon lights and a microphone headset. Watch a grandmother in her natural habitat or in my case my great-grandmother.
She, for example, would rise at dawn, slip on an apron, and begin a day that would put most CEOs into an early grave. By 10 a.m., she had already baked bread, hung laundry, written a letter, weeded half the garden, and berated the local butcher for trying to sneak her yesterday’s cuts. By lunch, she had her children scrubbed, fed, and shooed out the door with instructions that could double as both moral code and military briefing. And in the evening she sat down with her knitting, a satisfied hum on her lips, without once saying, “I’m just so busy right now.”
And here’s the kicker: she did all of this without a podcast whispering “optimise your mornings,” without a bullet journal colour-coded like a parrot, and without an app buzzing every 20 minutes to remind her she was still alive. No smartwatch ever congratulated her for standing up. No habit tracker ever patted her on the back for drinking water. She drank water because…she was thirsty. Revolutionary and almost audacious.
Our grandparents, parents, and great-grandparents ran households, farms, and entire lives with little more than a wall calendar, a pencil stub, and a memory. And those calendars weren’t filled with “vision-mapping strategy sessions” or “deep work blocks.” They had notes like “Dentist 2:30” and “Feed chickens.” Notice the modesty. No one said, “I’m cultivating my bio-rhythmic synergy with poultry.” They just fed the damn chickens.
The irony, of course, is that these people actually accomplished things. They didn’t just manage tasks; they finished them. The bread wasn’t a goal; it was bread. The laundry wasn’t an “ongoing process,” it was hung, dried, folded, and back in the cupboard before our modern selves had even chosen a filter for the Instagram story about our laundry. They lived in a world where doing was just doing—not performance art.
And let’s not forget the soundtrack. They didn’t need productivity playlists or “focus beats to study/work/cry to.” They hummed. Simple, melodic humming, the human equivalent of white noise, and apparently all that was required to push through hours of repetitive, necessary work. Today we’d call it mindfulness, package it in a subscription app, and charge €9,99 a month for the privilege of listening to a stranger breathe rhythmically into a microphone.
It makes you wonder: were they secretly productivity ninjas, or have we just gotten worse at life while pretending we’re better at managing it? Our ancestors didn’t outsource their discipline to devices. They relied on habit, necessity, and the occasional guilt trip from a neighbour who caught them lounging when the hedges clearly needed trimming.
The most galling part? They weren’t even smug about it. My great- grandmother never once looked up from her knitting and said, “You know, I’ve really hacked my workflow this week.” She didn’t have a workflow. She had a life. And somehow, without apps, courses, or a single TED Talk, she got it done.
Productivity Porn
If the grandmothers of the world represented the quiet, no-nonsense era of getting things done, then our generation represents the age of productivity porn. And I use the word porn quite deliberately — it’s about spectacle, titillation, and the illusion of intimacy without ever actually doing the thing.
Take bullet journals. These are not notebooks. These are illuminated manuscripts. Monks once spent decades painting saints into margins; today, people spend whole afternoons sketching vines and pastel banners around a line that says “Buy oat milk.” They post pictures of their spreads online with captions like “Not perfect, but I’m learning” — as if Michelangelo is hovering nearby to critique the shading on their habit tracker. These journals are less about productivity and more about performing the idea of productivity. Because nothing screams efficiency like spending three hours drawing a calendar you could have bought at the supermarket for €2,50.
And then there are the YouTube productivity gurus. You know the ones: backlit with LED strips in shades of cyberpunk purple, wearing noise-canceling headphones the size of planets. They stare into the camera with the intensity of a man who hasn’t blinked since 2016 and explain how to fold socks in a way that will shave six seconds off your morning routine. “Friends, time is money,” they whisper, eyes gleaming, “and if you waste those six seconds daily, by the end of the year you’ll have lost an entire day of potential hustle.” Somewhere, a sock drawer weeps.
Their videos are choreographed with the solemnity of religious liturgy: opening sequence of hands tapping a sleek keyboard, the click of a pen placed just so, the steam of a perfect cup of coffee. Each shot screams: this could be you, if only you bought the same lamp, the same mousepad, the same personality transplant. They don’t just tell you how to work — they sell you a vibe, an aesthetic. Productivity is no longer about getting things done; it’s about looking good while pretending to get things done.
Of course, no productivity porn is complete without the obsession with time rituals. Enter: the cult of the “5 a.m. club.” A club so exclusive it requires you to hate yourself before dawn. We are told that all great leaders, thinkers, and entrepreneurs rise while it is still night, conquer their demons by 6:00, and by 7:00 have already written their memoirs. Reality: most people in the 5 a.m. club are just grumpy zombies clutching their third coffee by 9:00, silently plotting murder against the alarm clock. But still, the myth persists. Sleep, apparently, is for the unambitious.
Then we have the Pomodoro timer: an innocent tomato-shaped kitchen gadget, hijacked and transformed into a productivity overlord. You are allowed to work for precisely 25 minutes — not 24, not 26 — before the tomato pings and permits you to pee. The idea is to break work into digestible chunks, which sounds reasonable until you realise you’re now living in fear of a vegetable (or is it a fruit?). Nothing like being micromanaged by a plastic fruit to make you feel like you’re in charge of your destiny.
And the “hack your brain” routines! We’re told to rearrange our desks at a 17-degree angle to maximise creativity, eat walnuts for memory, shower cold for discipline, and write affirmations while standing in a power pose. Because clearly, the only thing standing between you and your Nobel Prize is whether you journal in blue ink or black. Forget effort, perseverance, or talent. No, friend — you just haven’t bio-hacked your pineal gland yet.
The best part? Hobbies are no longer hobbies. They’re side hustles disguised as hobbies. We can’t simply knit a scarf; we must monetise the knitting by opening an Etsy shop, branding it “Artisanal Mindful Threads,” and posting reels about the meditative benefits of purling. We can’t bake bread; we must create a YouTube channel called “Loaf & Hustle” and market our sourdough starter as a potential pet and spiritual advisor. Every joy must be content, every pastime a revenue stream, every minute a cog in the machine of constant output.
And so the cycle spins. We fetishise the tools, the systems, the aesthetics. We watch the videos, buy the gadgets, light the scented candle, set the timer, fold the socks, and track the hydration. By the end of it, the day is gone, but at least we’ve documented our failure beautifully.
The Multitasking Olympics
If productivity porn is the foreplay, then multitasking is the main event — the Olympics of our modern age. Forget Paris, Los Angeles, or Tokyo: the real Games are happening in open-plan offices, train stations, and your own bathroom. We don’t merely multitask; we compete, we show off, we keep score.
Picture it: stadium lights blazing, crowds roaring, a commentator whispering with reverence:
“And here she comes, ladies and gentlemen — attempting the legendary triple. She’s replying to an email, microwaving leftovers, and explaining algebra to her child, all in one fluid sequence. Incredible composure! Will she stick the landing?”
Let’s break down some of the disciplines:
The Toilet Texters.
Elite athletes who risk both dignity and hygiene in the relentless pursuit of inbox zero. These champions balance smartphones with surgical precision while negotiating trousers and gravity. Their motto: “I reply, therefore I am.” Bonus points awarded for correct grammar under pressure.
The Zoom-and-Chop.
Competitors must cook a meal while nodding intelligently in a virtual meeting. Danger is part of the thrill — one distracted head tilt and suddenly “synergy goals” become diced fingertips. Points deducted for leaving the microphone unmuted while cursing at boiling pasta.
The Drive-and-Conference Sprint.
A classic. One hand on the wheel, the other gesturing wildly to a Bluetooth headset. Event regulations strictly forbid turning on the camera, yet someone always does, providing priceless footage of their steering wheel while discussing quarterly revenue.
The Meditation Multitask.
Truly for advanced athletes. Contestants must “sit in silence” while simultaneously scrolling Instagram reels about how to sit in silence. Extra credit for tagging #mindfulness during the session.
The Bedtime Biathlon.
A gruelling endurance test: watching Netflix while answering Slack messages and half-heartedly swiping on a dating app. Judges look for seamless transitions: laugh at sitcom → send “LOL” to boss → swipe left on Martin who “loves long walks and crypto.”
Our culture treats multitasking like a superpower. The more plates you spin, the more heroic you appear. We applaud the colleague who proudly declares, “I was on three calls at once today!” — as if that’s an achievement, rather than evidence of a brain quietly filing for divorce.
And here’s the cruel irony: science has been yelling at us for years that multitasking is a lie. The brain doesn’t juggle; it just drops things quickly and pretends it didn’t. But do we listen? Of course not. We’re too busy toggling between a spreadsheet, WhatsApp, and a podcast about how to stop multitasking.
Yet we can’t resist the thrill. There’s a high that comes from feeling stretched so thin you could double as cling film. It makes us feel important, necessary, plugged in. And because nothing can simply be, we have apps to measure it. “Focus dashboards” that proudly inform us we switched tasks 432 times in one day. Congratulations! You are now officially a hummingbird with Wi-Fi.
It’s absurd, but here’s the part that makes me laugh most: multitasking isn’t even efficient. It’s just chaotic cosplay. You’re not a productivity wizard; you’re a toddler running around with scissors yelling, “Look at me, I’m helping!” But since everyone else is doing it, the toddler gets a medal, a LinkedIn endorsement, and maybe even a TED Talk.
So yes, multitasking is our modern Olympic sport. But unlike gymnastics or swimming, nobody actually wins. There are no medals, just cold coffee, half-finished emails, and dinner that tastes faintly of despair.
The Downside or Humorous Truth
Here’s the punchline nobody laughs at: our fetish for productivity doesn’t actually make us productive. It just makes us tired, guilty, and vaguely resentful of life itself. Productivity is supposed to help us live better. Instead, we end up living like interns in our own existence, overworked and underpaid in joy.
Let’s start with guilt. Productivity culture has convinced us that exhaustion is a moral achievement. If you’re not tired, clearly you’re not trying hard enough. Rested? How dare you. If you wake up without eye bags, you must be unemployed, unambitious, or possibly French.
We’ve turned self-care into another checkbox. “Relax” is now a scheduled task. People actually put “nap” into Google Calendar. Imagine explaining this to a farmer in 1820: “Yes, Hans, I’ve set aside 30 minutes on Tuesday to stare blankly into space and not plough the field.” Hans would stare at you, spit into the soil, and finish ploughing. Meanwhile, we stare at our “relaxation reminder” and feel anxious because we’re five minutes late to being calm.
And what about vacations? Once upon a time, holidays were for doing nothing. Now they’re productivity retreats. You’re expected to “recharge,” “gain perspective,” maybe even “write your book.” God forbid you just drink wine, take naps, and come back with nothing but sunburn and shame.
The fetish turns everything into labor. Reading a novel? Better highlight key insights for your “personal growth journal.” Going for a walk? Don’t forget to track your steps, heart rate, and “mood improvement metrics.” Even sex isn’t safe — somewhere, someone is wearing a Fitbit and calling it cardio.
It’s no surprise then that burnout is our default setting. We treat our lives like a startup with terrible funding: always hustling, always pitching, never profitable. And here’s the twisted part: even when we collapse, we feel guilty. I should be doing more. I should be recovering faster. I should be optimising my burnout experience.
The fetish whispers that enough is never enough. There’s always another hack, another app, another guru selling “10X performance” for the low price of your soul. And because everyone else seems to be managing — or at least performing the appearance of managing — we assume the problem is us. We’re not focused enough, disciplined enough, optimised enough. Which is nonsense. The truth is, we are all just hamsters, running on wheels that lead nowhere, clapping for each other’s stamina.
And maybe that’s the cruelest joke: productivity was meant to save us time, but now we spend all our time trying to be productive. We could have rested, laughed, lived. Instead, we spent three hours reorganising our to-do list into “urgent,” “important,” and “soul-destroying.”
So yes, the downside is real. Productivity isn’t freedom anymore; it’s a treadmill with better branding. And the treadmill, of course, comes with a subscription fee.
The Reframe or Playful Twist
Here’s a scandalous suggestion: maybe the real productivity hack is… doing less.
I know, blasphemy. Somewhere, a YouTube guru just dropped his ring light in horror. But think about it: all this optimising, tracking, hacking, and bullet-journaling hasn’t delivered us to nirvana. It’s delivered us to carpal tunnel syndrome and inboxes that breed like rabbits. Perhaps, instead of another system, what we need is subtraction.
Of course, in true modern fashion, even doing less will need branding. Picture the launch of the hottest new app:
Do Nothing™
Tagline: “For when you want to stop pretending you’re busy.”
Free version: stare out the window for five minutes.
Premium version: extended window-staring with optional cat.
Platinum upgrade: the app deletes all your other apps, throws your phone into a lake, and sends you a postcard that just says “You’re welcome.”
Think of the features!
Nap Tracker: counts sheep for you.
Mindless Scroll Simulation: shows you a blank screen while congratulating you for wasting time intentionally.
Laziness Metrics: “Congratulations! You accomplished absolutely nothing today. Your ancestors would be proud.”
You laugh, but admit it — you’d download it. And you’d probably feel better after five minutes with Do Nothing™ than five hours in “Focus Bunny 2.0.”
Here’s the thing: life isn’t about balance sheets of tasks completed. It’s not about perfectly optimised mornings or Olympic-level multitasking. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is sit, sip your coffee before it gets cold, and let the world spin without your frantic assistance. The bread still rises without your hydration tracker. The sun still sets whether you’re in the 5 a.m. club or the “9 a.m. and barely human” club.
We’ve mistaken busyness for worth, efficiency for meaning. But maybe true productivity isn’t about doing more — it’s about choosing what actually matters and letting the rest rot in the compost heap where it belongs.
So yes, I’ll keep my planner (mostly for doodling), and yes, I’ll keep my apps (they make me feel important). But the older I get, the more convinced I am that the point of life isn’t to juggle every flaming torch — it’s to decide which torches to quietly set down before your hair catches fire.
And if anyone asks why you’re not busy, you can look them dead in the eye, take a slow sip of coffee, and say: “I’m beta-testing Do Nothing™. Premium.”
And so we arrive at the punchline: our obsession with productivity has produced… an obsession with productivity. A perfect closed loop. We spend our hours arranging the furniture of our lives without ever sitting on the couch. We light candles at the altar of “busy” while secretly longing for the heresy of stillness.
But maybe — just maybe — that’s where the joy sneaks in. Not in the endless scheduling, the bullet-journaling, or the tomato-shaped timers, but in those small acts of defiance: ignoring an email until tomorrow, staring at the ceiling for no reason, walking without counting the steps, drinking water because it tastes good and not because your watch demanded it. These tiny rebellions are where life breathes again.
Still, let’s not get too sentimental. If you really want to prove you’ve understood this essay, you know what to do: comment immediately. Yes, right now. Don’t you dare leave this tab until you’ve typed at least three sentences of profound reflection. Remember, engagement is productivity, and productivity is the only path to salvation.
Because if you don’t? Well then, clearly, you’re slacking. And nobody wants to be the person who failed the Productivity Olympics, do they?
Now go forth, my fellow worshippers. May your sticky notes flutter, your planners sparkle, and your Pomodoros ping. And may you occasionally — gloriously — do absolutely nothing at all.
🎶My Song for you
I thought this song fits perfectly - aren’t we living in a coal mine of our own making?
For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!
📚My Poem for you
Is by W.H. Davies (1871-1940)
Leisure
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
👀Impression
Instead of a personal photo I have a great book recommedation…
What’s the most ridiculous productivity “hack” you’ve ever tried — and did it work, or just make you busier?
If you could delete one thing from your to-do list forever and get away with it, what would it be?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, leave a ❤️, or send me a message. I always love hearing from you.
Wishing you a lazy, do-nothing weekend wherever you are.
Yours
Tanja 🤗
PS. You can now also find my podcast on Spotify
Change & Evolve and feel free to get in touch
