[antifragile 4 🔥 - productivity ✅] Oliver Burkeman on the trap, hating Mondays, PSA about meetings, hell yeah or no

#44: a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind.

Welcome to the 44th edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.

It’s a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind. Some weeks will have a theme, others will meander. Expect it every Friday.

This week, we’re talking about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A pseudo-religion for the godless. A naughty obsession for the faithful.

A topic that likely has you rushing through this very sentence to get to your next thing.

That’s right, ladies and germs. We’re talking none other than Prrrrroductivity ✅!

How much can you get done?? GO.

But first…

—

📸 50-Word Dad Life Snapshot: Our oldest has a stomach bug this week 😵‍💫. All plans, eviscerated. The boundaries of our patience, probed.

A thin layer of excrement coats our home.

Despite it all, there’s something special - in a primal sort of way - about being there for your child in their worst moments.

—

Here is this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:

1. Oliver Burkeman 🕳️ on the black hole of productivity

2. a reminder 🌄 to be intentional with your production

3. a public service 📢 announcement about meetings

4. Derek Sivers’ 👏 👎 Hell Yeah or No

+ 🏊🏻 🚴🏻‍♂️ 🏃🏻‍♂️ Real Life Photo of the Week

—

1.) Oliver Burkeman on the black hole 🕳️ of productivity

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is, for me, a philosophy book. It presents an alternative way to view the world. One that steps back from the fetishization of productivity and asks, Why are we doing this stuff at all?

The ideas are so thought-provoking and hit so close to home (myself a devout member of the Church of Productivity), that it’s on my shortlist of books to revisit every year. It’s a necessary salve to my compulsive urge to always be doing more.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.

We think the wrong uses of our time will bring us satisfaction. We think that jamming more and more into our days will bring us closer to fulfillment. But even if those things qualify as activities that normally might bring you satisfaction, jamming them together in a never ending river of efficiency sucks all of their potential fulfillment-making potential. Becoming more productive in our tasks does NOT create more fulfillment, but rather, it creates less.

The fundamental problem is that this attitude toward time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time—instead of just being time, you might say—it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally “out of the way.”

But the choice you can make is to stop believing you’ll ever solve the challenge of busyness by cramming more in, because that just makes matters worse.

2.) a reminder 🌄 to be intentional with your production

Life, I knew, was supposed to be more joyful than this, more real, more meaningful, and the world was supposed to be more beautiful.

We were not supposed to hate Mondays and live for the weekends and holidays. We were not supposed to have to raise our hands to be allowed to pee.

We were not supposed to be kept indoors on a beautiful day, day after day.

Charles Einsentein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

I actually found this passage in Four Thousand Weeks, but thought it deserved its own section.

Much of this doesn’t apply to me. I love Mondays. I love my work. My life brings me incredible amounts of joy.

But I do often find myself tapping the infinite well of more in search of novel ways to be productive, instead of taking a step back and asking why? Or (god forbid) what if I spend today on non-productive things?

I want my kids to work hard and understand why they’re doing it. To produce not for productivity’s sake, but for something greater. Maybe it’s a mission, maybe it’s a lifestyle, maybe it’s something else.

To be intentional with their production, and not to be trapped indoors on beautiful days if that’s not what they want.

3.) a public service 📢 announcement about meetings

Stop having them so much. For god’s sake.

That’s it.

Meeting adjourned.

4.) Derek Sivers’ 👏 👎 Hell Yeah or No

Derek Sivers is a nut (go to 32:30 in the episode), and I love him.

One of my favorite philosophies of his is Hell Yeah or No. If it’s not a “Hell yeah!” then it’s a “No”.

Having kids has actually helped put this in practice more (you have more excuses to say no), but saying yes only to things we’re very excited about doing results in a less crammed, more enjoyable weekly schedule.

Real Life Photo of the Week 📸

I bet you were not expecting a shirtless photo of me.

My triathlon was this past weekend! Very proud of the effort - PR’d by 21 min, 5th Age Group, 37th Overall, and more importantly, didn’t cramp and finished strong! Thanks again to my coach, Brian Sherlock, for guiding me to success.

—

Dads get stronger as we age, not the other way around 😉 💪🏻

Two last things for you this week:

1. Cancel an unnecessary meeting. Then cancel another.

2. Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥

With love,
Chris

—

Did this edition resonate with you? Sharing is caring. Send to a fellow antifragile dad.