On Productivity by Lindsay Sihilling

Katie was teaching full time, getting her Master’s, leading our group, trying to give up Mountain Dew, and training for a half marathon when she gathered to say: “This is the wrong kind of living.” She quit all of her commitments, leaving every weeknight without an obligation, opening up space and time for leisure and cooking and the lightness of having nothing to do after work.

Still, this is the one of the most profound acts of productivity I know. Losing the packed schedule to gain restfulness at home; shutting down the bustle of traffic from meeting to meeting, and opening up the chance that her husband might come home to someone fully herself, a wife reading at the table, productively doing less.

The question of scheduling comes to mind when I think about how to govern the pace of my life. Is scheduling slotting the friend I love into the hour I have after work and before dinner? Or does life without a plan make available the spontaneity of running into a friend on the street, and falling deep into conversation as we sit on the concrete curb, watching the sky darken?

Perhaps unearthing real productivity is about usefulness. Does what I am doing (typing, saying, dreaming, folding) really matter? I find I enjoy my own presence most when I go slowly. I tend to my first morning spasms of to-dos with a slow look around the room, the light cornering off the floor. In times of hurry I miss the cue from my roommate who is down and would like to pause for a conversation. I stare blankly at the mass of papers and books and uncapped pens on my desk and wonder, is this the state of my brain? Please, no.

This is how I envision my productive self: (And I pause, daunted.) I see myself available to everything that will bring me life. I say yes to the fortune of an invitation to breakfast on a Tuesday morning. But I say no to a Saturday full of starts and stops, going in and coming out, errands and to do lists, a day which really yields no produce at all, only checked boxes that would have crossed themselves off in their own time.