“Lifehacking” was coined as an idea in programmer’s circles.
The idea was that you could get creative with some tasks so that you could free up time for other pursuits that you would much rather be doing.
And here’s just the rub.
If you want freedom to do things you want to do, it is a great idea to do the things you need to get done faster and with less effort.
If you just get caught up on the idea of doing things faster and with less effort, without a reason why, then your days will just be consumed by everything that needs doing.
It is the funniest when it comes to a 9-to-5 job.
Unpurposeful Productivity at Work
Make your job any more efficiently, and you are likely to suffer from it.
Best case, you really do get more done… and since you are such a great performer, you get even more to do. Your time has to be filled, after all. It’s on the company’s payroll, so you better be busy all the company’s time.
More than a little likely, your company still won’t respect, let alone pay, you any more for being such a great worker drone.
Chances are, you will not be any more creative for it, for that would require some time to ponder the existing processes and problems and leisure to come up with new ideas.
You will be unpopular with co-workers and perhaps direct reports, though.
Without a why, similar patterns will emerge in your non-work life, all the same.
Unpurposeful Productivity in Life
You free up time by washing the dishes more efficiently, organizing your time all around getting things done according to a prioritized list of your important goals, even… and the free time will be filled by relaxation from all that organizing and things that come up unplanned at worst, the prioritizing and scheduling itself, at best.
Things that “need” doing fill up the time available for them.
It doesn’t just apply to how quickly you can get a project done, depending on the time you have allocated for it.
It happens even more with the things that are not projects you really want to get done.
Whenever and wherever there is freed-up time, but an absence of a “Why” that this time was made for, things will just come up and fill up that time.
So, before you even start considering productivity and life hacks, ask yourself what you would want to be more productive *for*.
Know your Why.
