The term “productivity” often conjures images of factory floors and “widgets per hour” metrics. But when applied to the complex, creative, and relational work of life, this measurement falls short.
I believe productivity is about more than output. It’s about alignment: how your environments, relationships, energy, and inner world support the life and work you want to create.
True productivity is holistic. It recognizes that:
- Your current and potential ability are sourced from your stability, security, and safety. Your home — both the physical place where you live and the home you find within yourself — is the foundation for everything you create and contribute.
- Life is not a sprint. Sustainable consistency over the long arc of time is more constructive than navigating the waves of intensity followed by burnout.
- Emotional regulation, nervous system health, and physical health are essential foundations for consistent and sustainable work.
- Pain — whether physical, emotional, or spiritual — is often a barrier to presence and connection, keeping us from accessing our fullest potential.
- Cognitive bandwidth, more than time or energy, is the most valuable resources we have in service of our work. Things that drain our cognitive bandwidth levy an outsized cost on the quality of our work, or whether we can even work at all.
- The rhythm of the seasons — both in nature and in our personal lives — cannot be overridden or ignored. There is a time for doing and a time for resting. A time for intense growth and a time for maintenance. Even linear time progresses in cycles: the clock is a circle, and the hour and minute hands come back around every day.
- The quality of our relationships and support systems plays a significant role in our ability to fulfill our potential. We need people who help us feel safe enough to take the creative, emotional, physical, and financial risks that are involved in meeting our edge and doing meaningful work.
- Resistance, shadow, habits, and other unconscious behaviors are often barriers to creating, contributing, and connecting meaningfully.
- There is no distinction between physical health, mental health, emotional health, and spiritual health. All health is nervous system health. Everything we do in life — from workouts to creative work to mindfulness practices — involves all parts of us because they are all related by one nervous system. Even if you sit or stand at a desk all day doing “knowledge work,” you are still using your body, just like an athlete still uses their brain.
- The distinction between “life” and “business” — and the attempts to find balance between them — is flawed. To live a well-rounded life recognizes that every part of life impacts every other part of life. An argument with your spouse or kids impacts how you show up at work, just as a bad day at the office impacts how you show up for your family when you come home at night.
- Our ability to move through life with confidence, ease, and in flow both with life’s rhythms and our personal rhythms depends on being aligned in all areas of life. It requires having a fully-functioning “wheel of life,” just like driving a car effectively requires tires that are filled with air and well-attached to the car.
- Productivity is not just about doing more — or about doing at all. It’s about living with clarity and intention, creating outcomes that matter to you and others while honoring your well-being. Productivity is both generative and receptive. It is found in the space between work and rest. Productivity is about showing up with presence and purpose.
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