A Life in Debt

I heard an insightful thing the other day from Oliver Burkeman, the author of the intriguingly titled ‘4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals’.

‘4000 Weeks’ is a bestselling book where he explores our relationship with time and how to make the most of it.

The title is intriguing because ‘4000 Weeks’ represents roughly 80 years—the average human lifespan.

I read it a couple of years ago, and if you don’t feel like doing so, I can summarize its central message for you now:

Life is short, and you’ll never have the time or capacity to do everything. Therefore, make peace with your limitations, focus on a few things that really matter to you, and give them your very best.

At the time, I was going through a bit of a ‘self-help’ phase, and this felt like a refreshingly British antidote to much of the American ‘you are the master of the universe’-style advice I was encountering elsewhere.

Recently, Oliver Burkeman published an article that resonated deeply with me.

He discussed his theory of ‘the productivity debt’.

Every morning, he says (and I agree), we wake up in a self-created deficit—a ‘productivity debt’—which we then attempt to pay off by completing the tasks we set for ourselves throughout the day.

The cruellest thing about the productivity debt is that, once our tasks are accomplished, we don't feel like we've moved forward. Instead, all we are left with is the uneasy relief of having gotten ourselves back to square one.

Take this morning, for example.

Having emerged from a long and much-needed sleep, it took mere seconds before I started mentally listing all the things I feel I should accomplish by the end of the day: write this email, go to the gym, send some invoices, finish a song I’m working on, film something for social media, buy some groceries, and tidy the house.

But I know that completing these tasks won’t feel like ascending some magical staircase of progress.

Instead, it will feel like I’m paying back my productivity debt; hauling myself out of a hole just to have a few hours in the evening where I can feel like I might have broken even again.

And realistically, I probably won’t complete them all.

Which means that tomorrow I’ll wake up even further in the red.

Burkeman articulates this better than I can when he points out:

‘Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood than this vague sense that I'm falling behind and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output. It's as if I need to justify my existence by staying "on top of things" to stave off some ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon my head.’

What’s absurd about this is that this ‘vague sense of falling behind,’ this 'minimum standard of output' against which I’m judging myself, is entirely self-imposed.

I don’t have a boss whose profits depend on my social media output.

It's something I’ve chosen to think I should do, entirely of my own free will.

I don’t flatter myself by thinking that anyone would really care if I didn’t write this email today (though I certainly am flattered by how many of you get in touch to say you enjoy reading them).

I didn’t write it yesterday, for example, and the world didn’t end.

Maybe this feeling is more familiar to the self-employed.

Perhaps, since nobody is setting deadlines for us, we fall more easily into this odd psychological pattern of self-flagellation.

But I don’t think so.

I suspect that many of us live with productivity debt, regardless of our employment status.

I guess working for someone else just means that their productivity debt regularly compounds with yours.

As Dolly Parton puts it: ‘what a way to make a living.’

What I know for sure is that, in my mind, there seems to exist a grey-faced line manager.

Every morning and evening, we have an awkward performance review session where I almost always fail to meet his minimum expectations.

Maybe I’ll call him Neil.

Now that I’ve personified Neil, I actually feel far less guilty about disappointing him.

It’s my life, after all, not Neil’s.

Though technically, as a figment of my imagination, it actually is his life too.

And look: I’ve actually written this email. Or most of it, at least.

And I’ve enjoyed it, as I always do.

It’d be nice, though, to reframe my perspective on the whole ordeal.

Rather than waking up in a psychological deficit, wouldn’t life be better if every day felt like starting at zero—a place of sufficiency—and that, to quote D:Ream, things could only get better?

If going to the gym, buying groceries, writing this email, and finishing the song were lovely bonuses rather than desperate flailings in this never-ending effort to tread functional water.

(And yes: I’m aware I’ve mixed my metaphors so much now that it’s becoming ridiculous).

Anyway, I’m about to pour myself another cup of ambition and get stuck in.

(That metaphor isn't even mine, before you start: it's Dolly again).

Thanks for sitting with me while I tick off item one.

And, as always, keep dreaming.

Rob