The Most Practical Approach to Sustainable Productivity

In my 20s, when I worked as an attorney in a major NYC corporate law firm, every day felt the same.

I’d wake up early to fit in a workout before going to the office. Once at the office, I rarely left the building until I left for the day. Often, I worked until late at night.

Every day felt the same; the work differing only based on the cases I was assigned and the clients needs. From inside the confines of the skyskraper where I worked, there were few markers of a change in season.

The constant pressure, the unpredictability of my schedule, and the lack of control over when I’d have to work late caused so much stress that I was constantly sick. After getting mono for the 4th time, I had enough.

In my 30s, I took my skills to the world of residential real estate. As a real estate agent, my work got me out from behind a desk, out of an office, and spending more time walking around outside. I was keenly aware of the seasons, at least in terms of the weather. But I didn’t yet know about working with these natural cycles.

In terms of my work, I would set a goal and work hard to achieve it.

Although in theory I had control of my own schedule, I was conditioned to work hard every day without letting up until the job was done. The only problem was that the job was never done. I couldn’t predict when clients would show up or be ready, and I was constantly hustling for new clients.

Working alone also took its toll.

Eventually, I burned out.

The Life-Changing Productivity Advice

It wasn’t until I was almost 40 — and in recovery from a brain injury — that I received the advice that would change my life and my approach to “productivity”:

Take your cues from nature.

That advice led me to learn more about the rhythms, cycles, and energies of the seasons, the wheel of the year, lunar cycles, and the movement of planets around the wheel of zodiac.

I wish I could tell you that everything magically changed, but it wasn’t that instant. Old habits die hard, and undoing well-conditioned habits around work is not a quick process.

Learning about the seasonal cycles and their energies is fairly straightforward. Adapting life to actually live in alignment with the seasonal cycles — in a culture that still pushes the opposite — can be a bit more complicated.

Like exercise, meditation, and many other essential parts of life, it’s a practice.

That said, I keep coming back to this framework because I know that my old ways led to illness, chronic stress, and burnout; a life that felt like a constant slog.

Aligning life to the energy of the seasons offers greater ease and flow, more spaciousness, and greater nourishment and joy. It helps us create time and space for all of life — not just work — which is a crucial component of living a harmonized life.

The Most Practical Approach to Productivity

If you’ve been conditioned to set goals, buckle down, work hard and not let up until you’ve finished your tasks, this approach can seem a little “woo.”

To the contrary: aligning with the energy of the seasons is a grounded, practical approach.

Although it may seem novel in today’s world, this is the original approach that humans have used for thousands of years. Before electricity, before the Gregorian calendar, before corporate offices and knowledge work, this was the only way.

Aligning to the seasons also honors one of the core axioms of personal productivity:

Success is not just about what you do; it’s also about when you do it.

Consider that…

• Hustling to plant seeds in the middle of the winter does no good if the ground is frozen and the seeds can’t take root.
• Racing to catch a sunset won’t pay off if you’re standing in your location at 6 am. It would be even worse if you were in a spot that faces east.
• Getting a boat off the shore is a lot more work at low tide than it is at high tide.

You Already Rely on Cycles and Seasons in Some Parts of Life

If you look around more closely, you’ll notice that the cyclical approach to work and productivity has actually persisted in a range of industries and areas.

• *Schools*: Most schools adopt this approach: school starts in autumn, with breaks in winter and start of spring, and a longer summer break.
• *Sports*: Major sports are run in seasons, with pre-season training, the main season, playoffs, and an off-season. This trickles down to amateur and youth sports.
• *Markets*: Most market-based industries are cyclical. For example, if you study the real estate market and stock market, you’ll notice seasonal trends: times of year that tend to be slower and other times that tend to have higher activity.
• *Physical Training*: Any good training program will incorporate cycles: a build-up, a period of intensity, a taper, and a deload period.
• *Trends*: Fashion, music, and other cultural trends all work on cycles. Every decade’s hot fashions and music eventually has a resurgence. Even shoulder pads and bellbottoms have come back in style.

You probably have an area in your life where you’re already following cycles. Seeing where you are already doing this can help you adopt it more fully in your life.

Time is Cyclical

The adoption of the Gregorian calendar has led us to approach a year in a linear manner: we start in January and peel off pages of the calendar as we move through the year.

But this is a relatively new phenomenon. For millennia, humans took their cues of what to do from the position of the sun and moon, the movement of the planets around the zodiac, the rise and fall of the tides, and the cycles of nature’s seasons.

Read: 7 Ways to Think About Time

Living in alignment with natures cycles recognizes that there is no beginning, middle, or end. Even clock time isn’t linear: the hands of a clock move around a circle, reminding us that everything comes around in time.

To live in alignment with these cycles, to take our cues from nature, is not “woo” — it’s distinctly human.