[AKN #90] The Never Ending Search For Productivity Hacks
LAUGH: A Compilation Of The Rock Using His Catch Phrase, LOVE: Charlie’s Thread On Counter Intuitive Life Advice
Sup homies?
This week, my fratteries are officially re-charged and I’m ready to go.
Thanks for being so understanding last week. Especially the 6 of you who reached out and let me know how disappointed you were in me not generating original content last Tuesday. It feels good to have people respect your boundaries.
I love sending this newsletter out week over week and I always get reminded of it during the weirdest times.
Like this weekend when I was flying and the plane hit a rough patch of turbulence, my mind began that classic “I’m going to die on a plane” internal monologue:
Holy shit this is it…I had a good run…I’m at peace with the life I lived, but I wish I could get my loved ones on the phone right now to say goodbye…
But god dammit, my last meal in this world was the United Airlines cheese burger? Like sure its better than you think it is, but not last meal of your life good…
And Jesus Christ, my last action in this world is going to be watching the newest and most awful Matrix movie? I don’t deserve that. Maybe I can get Jumanji to load as the aircraft careens towards the earth…
Oh well, at least we are at the stage of the pandemic where my funeral won’t be on Zoom. Do you know how livid my spirit would be watching the funeral home asking my loved ones to unmute to give the eulogy?
Legit the origin story of a ghost which haunts the earth for the rest of time.
But at the very end of my meditation on my own mortality, I was struck by a final thought:
Damn. Dying will be a tragedy. But arguably the bigger tragedy is going to be my inability to relay all of these last minute thoughts to the homies.
They’d love the thought of my spirit haunting the earth after being subjected to a Zoom funeral.
Thankfully, I made it back to the page so I could tell you.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: The Never Ending Search For Productivity Hacks
We have all been there.
The gnawing desire to figure out how to be “more productive.”
You rifle through blog posts, podcast episodes, and the most popular self help books in search of the illusive fun fact which will unlock your next level of productivity.
“Ah, yes it was the way I take notes which needs reforming!”
“Oh my word! That is a great framework for how to focus on the most essential things!”
Listen. I’m going to let you down softly.
There are no miracle hacks or tricks to “becoming more productive.”
However, if you are haunted by this compulsive desire to find the newest hack, I recommend you stop and ask yourself “why do I care so much about being more productive?”
Of course the problem with that question is it might expose some uncomfortable truths.
Like “I don’t know why I care so much.”
Or “I bathe myself in a steady diet of productivity porn to drown out the overwhelming background hum of anxiety that lives in my skull. ”
Or “I perpetually feel like I’m not good enough because of some unprocessed childhood trauma.”
Who knows what your thing is, but if you have a perpetual compulsion to be more productive for the sake of productivity, you have a hole in your life you should look into.
So maybe instead of buying the newest popular self help book about mental models, you should take that money and invest it in therapy.
Not saying that in a judging way, but rather saying it in an “I’ve been down that road old friend, there is no gold in them hills, so why don’t you save your time and walk this way with me instead” kind of way :)
LAUGH: A Compilation Of The Rock Using His Catch Phrase
I grew up watching professional wrestling and I still love it.
Like I would non-ironically go to present day Wrestlemania in a heartbeat.
However, the wrestling from my childhood was a whole other level of entertaining and no one was better at the art of entertaining than Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
A fact which is solidified when you watch this compilation of him using one of his signature catch phrases.
LOVE: Charlie’s Thread On Counter Intuitive Life Advice
My friend Charlie Bleecker wrote this thread about counter intuitive life advice she’s learned from her dad.
I like this thread because it touches on the main issue with the self help industry.
Self help is a genre which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of over the years, but it teaches you there is one way to do things or a well established blueprint you can follow to get somewhere.
It promises to cure you of your anxiety, feelings of not being good enough, or inability to focus, but in reality it doesn’t do any of that.
Instead it gets you on some hedonic treadmill of reading Twitter threads, blog posts, and podcasts about how to cure yourself.
And that is the goal!
Because self help is a business. Its goal is to get repeat customers.
So I love a good thread where we question why we don’t just listen to people who are actually happy even though that person doesn’t use a regret minimization framework or eat a ketogenic diet.
On a related note, Charlie writes a lot of stuff like this which I find entertaining and she is an all around swell gal so I recommend you subscribe to her newsletter.
CLOSING TIME
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Mahalo,
K.Rapp