Why Productivity Can’t Save You
When I made the decision to move, I had five planners.
Five.
You’d think I was managing a Fortune 500 company–maybe one day in the future–the way each one served an absolutely necessary purpose for my new life. You’d think I’d discovered some revolutionary organization method that required multiple operating systems in order for life to function properly. Truthfully, the five planners made me feel like I was in control.
Outlook for work.
Google Calendar for birthdays.
Traditional monthly calendar for appointments.
A bullet journal to stay on top of habits and goals.
And Notion, because clearly the other systems weren’t enough.
Funny enough, each planner contained the same information, same goals, same promises. There were trackers, calendar invites, and reminders to wake up at 5:00 AM, work out four times a wek, write 2,000 words, drink water, read books. Everything you should do for a “That Girl” routine.
I had the perfect Sunday checklist. Meals were prepped. Laundry was saved. All my planning systems were time-blocked and color-coded to perfection. Without fail, something would go wrong on Monday – whether it be a meeting turned left or woes of toddlerdom – life would happen. Instead of pivoting, I’d abandon the systems altogether. The vision was compromised. Time to start over. And over. And over again.
Looking back, I wasn’t building plans. I was creating fantasies. Fantasy versions of my life, of myself, of success. These plans were never meant to support my reality. They helped me avoid it. I couldn’t see it then. I thought I was disciplined. People prided me on my ability to be organized, a well-oiled machine. My dopamine came from designing these systems, not actually doing the things.
You know the feeling. A new notebook. A color-coded calendar. An aesthetically pleasing Notion dashboard. I’m can feel the high as I type these words.
But why does it happen?
Because everything still feels possible. Nothing has failed yet. Not a workout, nor a writing session. The expectations you’ve set for yourself haven’t fallen short. The future is just as pretty as the system you spent hours upon hours designing to be fail-proof. Perfect…because it asks nothing of us.
Reality is different. It requires execution. Daily commitment to repeated actions, even after the excitement disappears. Even when you don’t have the conviction to show up perfectly.
That’s where I struggled.
I knew what to do. It was very detailed in each system I created to track its progress. My problem was action. Messy action. Allowing myself to fall into something, let myself unravel in the doing of things. The planning stages, like preparing for a child or a wedding, felt safe. For anyone who has given birth or signed that license, you know action requires us to be vulnerable. You expose yourself to failure, disappointment, and the possibility that your perfectly laid out vision may not come to fruition. As long as I stayed planning, I didn’t have to face the disappointment slowly enveloping my life.
Productivity allowed me the illusion that life could be mastered.
But life doesn’t work that way. Grief cannot be time-blocked. Heartbreak doesn’t last for a scheduled hour in your planner. Self-worth isn’t color-coded into some form of tracker.
Trust me. I tried it.
Underneath these systems, I was deeply unhappy. Depressed and disconnected. Floating through a life that others admired or commended, while all the while drowning, suffocating in my own demise. My solution: another system. Surely, everything would right itself if I could just organize it just so. In reality, I created elaborate plans, further disconnecting myself from reality. It was as if the more my heart became scattered and chaotic, the more my brain planned and organized. An addiction better than crack, but an addiction all the same.
Why wasn’t productivity solving my problems?
Why couldn’t a detailed planner, or five, help me avoid them?
Looking into yourself can be scary as hell, because there’s only you. No distracting mirrors. No shelves to place blame. Just you and a very confronting truth.
A truth I was too afraid to face.
Something in my life needed to change. And no amount of productivity could fix that.
Around this time, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I left the apartment I shared with my husband and moved into a place of my own. There was no planner for that. No tracker. No perfectly drawn roadmap that would let me know how this new journey would go. Just uncertainty, grief, fear, and a decision. To allow myself to be messy and unplanned for the first time in my life. To give myself permission to not know the answers. To live in the in-between of what was and what will be.
That was new for me.
And during this time, those five planners sat on my bookshelves collecting dust. I lived in the day-to-day, solely relying on a simple to-do list. So much clarity came to me in this time. Clarity prompted by action. Action turned into progress. Looking back, I could see how I conflated motion with movement. I was constantly working, spinning the hamster wheel of life, not realizing I was still in the cage. Not learning. Not growing.
But real growth happens when we engage with reality. One where we continue to progress, even with a missed workout or uncooked meal prep. People say you need to be more consistent. The reason your goals fail is that you lack it. But consistency was never missing. Consistency is making the decision to come back, again and again, especially when life isn’t perfect. That’s what matters most: returning to your reason why. Life will always disrupt your schedule. Man plans, God laughs.
These days, I still love a good planner, but I’ve downsized to only two – my Hobonichi Techo Cousin and Notion. I still have systems I’m working on building into habits. I still have goals I hope to achieve in the next year of my life. Simplified productivity. But I’ve let go of a problem that held me back.
Thinking that productivity would save me. Heal me. Fix me. Replace the lack of self-trust I had within myself. Productivity is a tool, not your entire identity. We are not “Productivity Queens/Kings/Theys.” Productivity is not a coping mechanism you use to escape your true problems. Trust yourself to use the tools, day in and day out, even when you don’t feel like showing up for yourself.
Because eventually everything will fall apart.
But the goal should always be, " Who do I become once it does?”
I don’t have some nice, neat answer to give you. Hell, I’m still learning myself. Because plans without action are futile. And at some point, the notebook must close. The planner put to the side. The systems secondary.
So that life itself can begin.
