If you have been fortunate enough to travel abroad, you may have realized first-hand the obsession we, as Americans, have with a specific kind of productivity relative to many other cultures. Without needing to dive into statistics and research, you probably already have a very strong anecdotal understanding that in this county, working non-stop for long hours and enduring consistent, significant sleep deprivation are indicators of productivity. It would not be unusual in this country for someone to say, “I worked until 3AM last night!” and for that to be impressive. Like….Wow – this person decided to work instead of sleep. They must be the opposite of lazy and highly productive, right?
Well, if you’re not in the U.S., the answer most of the time is “This person sounds crazy.” Many cultures have similar names for the same thing – just focusing on the art of being, rather than output. The Dutch call it “niksen.” The Italians call it “Dolce far niente” or the sweetness of doing nothing. Many eastern religions and cultures have multiple names for it as well, and often refer to this practice as various forms of meditation. You could even make the case that Costa Rica’s famous phrase “Pure Vida” or “Pure Life,” which can be used as a greeting or simply a phrase about not taking life too seriously and the benefits of living simply, is also an endorsement of making time to just be.
We could break down productivity across many different categories, but for the sake of this article, let’s say we have “output productivity” and “exploration productivity.” Output productivity is the kind of productivity you are more likely familiar with. It’s the kind of productivity your boss wants you to have when they give you an assignment at 5pm due the next morning. But exploration productivity is taking the time to just sit still and be. This could involve meditation, walking, daydreaming, anything really. But just something where the only priority is for you to sit with your thoughts and observe your mind. Exploratiom productivity can be immensely more powerful than output productivity, even though output productivity is what most companies seem to care most about.
As a former corporate attorney practicing “biglaw,” who now offers DIY legal solutions geared toward startups (https://legalsloth.com/?post_type=product), I understand all too well the incredible emphasis we place on output in this country. This is despite study (http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/22263/1/22263%20Does%2520being%2520bored%2520make%2520us%2520more%2520creativeV2.pdf) after study (https://bookshop.org/books/your-brain-at-work-revised-and-updated-strategies-for-overcoming-distraction-regaining-focus-and-working-smarter-all-day-long/9780063003156) telling us emphatically that if we are overworked and sleep deprived, our output will suffer significantly. Nonetheless, rarely do companies make time to enable their employees to actually focus on the art of just being, rejuvenating, and ultimately becoming more “productive” in the ways the company wants to see.
Exploration productivity and output productivity can actually be complimentary. They are not diametrically opposed, because by pursuing exploration productivity, you can end up with more output in a shorter amount of time. Yet, few companies really encourage or even allow for a balance of output productivity and exploration productivity. Even Bill Gates, who is perhaps near the forefront of Fortune 100 executives recognizing there are different kinds of productivity, gives one week to exploration productivity. In fact, he called it “Think Week.” Yet, it was only for one dedicated week (twice a year), and it seemed to generally be limited to Bill Gates. Imagine; out of all the thousands of employees at Microsoft, and each one gets 52 weeks in a year of their life, and out of all those thousands and thousands of weeks that could go to exploration productivity, only two do. Two weeks of exploration productivity vs hundreds of thousands of weeks of output productivity. And the fact that Bill Gates even took two weeks for exploration productivity was and still is considered revolutionary.
And if the research isn’t enough to convince you about the importance of cultivating the art of just being, reflecting on the lives of some of the world’s best known thought leaders should be. Remember how Isaac Newton discovered gravity? He was simply pondering life near an apple tree on his family’s farm while taking a break from Cambridge (eerily similar to today, Cambridge sent everyone home due to an outbreak of bubonic plague). Newton didn’t have a bunch of distractions like social media, emails, video games and television to return home to, so he got to cultivate the art of just being (in part due to lack of distracting technology and of course in part due to his privilege as a white male from a relatively affluent property-owning family). And that stillness of mind allowed him to have one of the most brilliant observations in human history.
Albert Einstein would famously wonder around. He would often credit his greatest ideas to his ability to simply be and ponder. One of his favorite hobbies was taking out his sailboat by himself, with no goal other than to simply sit on the ocean’s surface and think. Similarly, in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs points to how his decision to drop out of Reed college to explore his own curiosity, without any backup plan, was pivotal to the success he ultimately had.
It can be terrifying, however, to simply go off the beaten path to explore your own curiosity. Jobs mentioned this fear in his commencement speech. He recounted the difficulty of finding a place to stay and having no money and little food during this time in his life. However, you have to trust your gut. Big ideas don’t often come to those who are playing it safe, because those people are simply going through the motions. They are busy in their jobs that prioritize output, not creativity and innovation.
The road is the hardest when it’s unpaved. But you won’t get anywhere extraordinary following only paved roads. If innovation and originality were easy and common, you could easily innovate while playing it safe. But it’s not, so you can’t. Steve Jobs, however, knew that eventually things will fall into place. You’ll be able to see the road once it’s behind you. He said, “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
It’s worth noting that Steve Jobs experienced multiple instances of going off the safe road in his life. After founding Apple, a company he spent his entire 20s building into a $2billion dollar company with over 4,000 employees, he was fired after an intractable disagreement with the board of directors. But he realized after being fired that, “the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” In fact, Jobs went on to create both NeXT (which was eventually acquired by Apple and which a lot of Apple’s underlying technology is based) and Pixar, which of course created Toy Story. Can you imagine life without Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Pizza Planet?
Focusing on output productivity that companies deeply admire is not going to generally push you toward wild innovation, it’s just going to keep you making the most minor of adjustments to the status-quo. It also won’t be fulfilling, unless you really, really love the company you work for and have no deep interests outside of the company, which is highly unlikely, because you are probably not a robot. Focusing on output productivity instead of exploration productivity will not lead to anything extremely fruitful, other than not upsetting the company you work for. But in order to maximize your potential for exploration productivity, you
We see through multiple studies and anecdotes of famous thought leaders that exploration productivity must be considered as well as output productivity. Of course, you can’t pursue exploration productivity by watching endless Netflix and scrolling aimlessly through social media. You have to actually get comfortable with sitting in stillness, alone in your thoughts. But if you can do that, if you can carve out time for the art of being, you could become a timeless thought leader. Or, at the very least, you could get a bit more balance in your life. Either way, next time someone brags to you about sleepless nights for their company, you can tell them how unproductive they’re actually being because even in terms of output, the top ten percent of productive people are only actually productive for about 6 hours in an 8-hour work day according to research, which is why it’s also so useful to use a workflow planner, but perhaps that’s a post for another day.
In the words of Steve Jobs, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”