{"id":2397,"date":"2012-01-09T15:55:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T22:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=2397"},"modified":"2018-06-11T04:33:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:33:27","slug":"look-lazy-be-productive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/09\/look-lazy-be-productive\/","title":{"rendered":"Look Lazy, Be Productive"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a huge difference between looking<\/em> productive and being<\/em> productive. It\u2019s one I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self.<\/p>\n

About seven years ago, I had big ambitions. I was going to run my own online business and be successful. Unfortunately I didn\u2019t have any direct role models of people who had already done what I wanted to do, I could only read about them.<\/p>\n

One inference I made is that most successful people are incredibly productive. But because I had never met any of them, I had to guess what that would be like. And, like many people, I assumed that meant ruthless focus and monastic self-discipline.<\/p>\n

So I tried to emulate that model. I tried to avoid anything that looked \u201cunproductive\u201d like watching television, drinking or relaxing. I replaced them with reading, work and exercise\u2014all things I had associated with being productive.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably obvious I was no fun at parties.<\/p>\n

Looking VS Being Productive<\/h2>\n

Sometime later I started to actually meet successful people. Much to my surprise they weren\u2019t the Randian titans of discipline and focus. In fact many of them were the opposite, drinking, relaxing and full of vices.<\/p>\n

But even more surprisingly, they still got a lot done. Even though they hardly abstained from enjoying life, they got way more done than I could.<\/p>\n

It was around this time that I realized the difference between looking and being productive. Being productive means getting work done. It means being efficient and focused when you work, but it doesn\u2019t mean anything about your off-hours.<\/p>\n

Being<\/em> Productive Allows You To Appear<\/em> Unproductive<\/h2>\n

The reality is, the people who have the least fun aren\u2019t the most productive. They\u2019re the people trying to \u201clook\u201d productive. The students who spend their lives in the library to look like they\u2019re working hard. The office drones who stay late every evening even though their output is dwindling.<\/p>\n

These people, like I once did, confuse being productive with looking productive. And, at the end of the day your boss, professor or team members care about results, not how hard you appear to be working.<\/p>\n

The impression I give on this blog is that I\u2019m productive. I\u2019d say it\u2019s more or less a fair one (although there are many people more prolific than me). But if you talked to anyone who knows me personally, that probably isn\u2019t the surface impression they have. They know me as the guy convincing people to go to parties and who never appears to be working at all.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that I\u2019m lying to them or to you, it\u2019s simply that I don\u2019t care about appearances. I aim for ruthless efficiency in my working life so that can enable me to be relatively carefree and fun-loving in my personal life.<\/p>\n

Work Hard, But Have Fun Too<\/h2>\n

During the MIT Challenge, I\u2019ve been working up to 60 hours per week, much of it on hard-focus activities like watching lectures at twice the speed or reading textbooks. I\u2019ve also shared as much as possible about my working routines and the learning techniques I\u2019m using.<\/p>\n

But that hasn\u2019t stopped my personal life. I still go out for drinks at least once per week, meet people, go on dates, exercise. Blogging friend Maneesh Sethi<\/a>, who recently came to stay with me for a week said he was surprised by how relaxed I seemed.<\/p>\n

I say this not to brag that I\u2019ve achieved some nirvana work-life balance, or that I have some exceptional ability. Many, if not most, of the successful people I know have similar tendencies. They stop worrying about \u201clooking productive\u201d, get their work done and enjoy life as much as possible.<\/p>\n

The goal of productivity, and all the ideas I try to teach, isn\u2019t to become a monk who can work non-stop without tiring. It\u2019s to get a lot accomplished, in spite of not being monk-like. I respect the person who can calmly executes projects more than the person who constantly complains about working too much.<\/p>\n

Two Reasons Success While Enjoying Life Isn\u2019t a Contradiction<\/h2>\n

Part of the problem is our entire conception of work and life puts them at odds. We talk about work\/life \u201cbalance\u201d as if the two things were weights on a scale that too much work or too much fun would ruin the equilibrium.<\/p>\n

The first reason this scale metaphor holds little weight is that \u201cproductivity\u201d can\u2019t be stripped from the human element. Most of the successful people I know owe much to having built extensive social networks. It\u2019s a lot harder to make friends if you never have fun.<\/p>\n

The second is that fun replenishes the very mental energy you need to work. I take a day off every week, which often means going to a party and sleeping in, even when I\u2019m incredibly busy. The reason is that even though taking time off looks lazy, it results in higher performance work which more than pays for its costs.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the image of me as being a serious, humorless work-horse is a remnant of my days where that probably would have been an apt description. Or maybe it\u2019s a feature of the topics I like to write about\u2014I have many articles about my work philosophy and none telling the story of how I was attacked by gypsy dogs walking back drunk from a party in France.<\/p>\n

However, I think part of it is simply because someone who hasn\u2019t developed productive habits, it\u2019s difficult to conceptualize a way of getting work done that doesn\u2019t require unending hours of grueling labor. But the concept of productivity isn\u2019t at odds with being relaxed, they\u2019re almost synonymous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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