Friends! Colleagues! Random people who stumbled upon this post! We have a problem. And that problem is our unhealthy, counterproductive obsession with being productive.

For those who know me, you'll laugh at this opening because many tell me I'm one of the most productive people they've ever met. And it's true! I utilize every minute of every day. My to-do list is immaculately organized into days, subcategories, big things, small things, and a "most important" section. I love systems that streamline my work and maximize what I can accomplish.

And yet, I've had this nagging feeling, really since COVID started, that we're so focused on productivity that it's become unproductive. We're trapped in a paradox where our pursuit of efficiency is actually making us less efficient.

The Burnout Behind the Numbers

The statistics paint a stark picture. Despite all our productivity tools and optimizations, 67% of workers believe burnout worsened during the pandemic, and 69% of remote employees are experiencing burnout symptoms. Is it possible that in an attempt to optimize ourselves and make ourselves the most efficient versions we can be, that we are accidentally burning ourselves out faster? Over half of remote employees report working more hours than they did in the office, with 31% working "much more" than before the pandemic. Counteract this with the stories we hear of people holding multiple jobs at once and bragging about working in their PJs or half-heartedly from bed. It's almost as if we're trying to prove we're not those people, that we're the ones who are actually productive, even if it means working ourselves too hard.

We all have bad days and good days, but somewhere along the line, the bad days became less acceptable, even just to ourselves.

How AI Adds to the Problem (while being a believer in its potential)

Then came the latest productivity panacea: artificial intelligence. The claims are breathtaking. McKinsey research suggests generative AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy, and 64% of businesses expect that adopting AI will significantly impact productivity growth. Some studies show AI improving employee productivity by 66% on average, with claims reaching as high as 126% improvement for programmers using AI tools.

But here's where the productivity paradox reveals itself most clearly: 77% of employees say AI tools are doing the opposite of what's expected, actually adding to their workload, and 47% report not understanding how to achieve the expected productivity levels with AI.

I see this in my own work. AI certainly makes me more productive for some tasks - it helped edit this very blog post and answered at least a dozen random questions today. But it also took significant time to set up properly, over the course of months and experimenting with many of the new tools coming out every week. For some workflows, the initial investment was worth it. For others, I've definitely fallen into the sunk cost fallacy, wasting time thinking I could optimize something that didn't need optimizing.

The Optimization Trap

This is the heart of our productivity problem: we're spending so much time trying to be productive that we're not actually productive. We optimize our systems, download new apps, read productivity books, and reorganize our workflows - all in service of being more efficient. But these meta-productivity activities often consume more time than the actual productivity gains they provide.

First, it was about proving we could be productive working from home. 81% of remote workers check email outside of work hours, including 63% on weekends and 34% on vacations, hardly the picture of improved work-life balance productivity was supposed to deliver.

When that productivity started to wane (or was perceived to wane), we saw calls for return-to-office mandates, with leaders citing productivity concerns. Yet Bureau of Labor Statistics research finds "little relationship between labor productivity and the ability of workers in an industry to work entirely remotely".

The Science of Strategic Slowing Down

Here's what's particularly interesting: there are decades of research showing that breaks, rest, and unproductive time are essential for actual productivity and creativity. A study published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis found that 75% of students were substantially more productive during sessions with planned breaks. More than 85% of employees believe taking regular breaks would boost their productivity, yet more than one-quarter of workers don't take any break aside from lunch. There are proven systems like pomodoro set up to encourage breaks and yet we still work through them or question their value.

The research is overwhelming: rest breaks do not impact adversely upon productivity, and when coupled with health-promoting practices, can contribute to a paradigm shift for workplace culture. Taking effective breaks in the workplace has been associated with benefits to wellbeing and productivity in several roles. Studies show deliberate rest can boost productivity by 15% and improve work satisfaction by 37%.

Yet despite this mountain of evidence, every conversation, every tool, every minute feels like it needs to be productive. Unproductive time leads to guilt, pressure to make up hours, and more stress—which, ironically, makes us less productive.

Breaking the Productivity Paradox

Workplace stress inflicts an annual cost of around $300 billion on the U.S. economy, yet we continue to optimize for the appearance of productivity rather than actual results. We're measuring the wrong things and optimizing for the wrong outcomes.

The most productive teams I've worked with, and the research backs this up, aren't the ones with the most sophisticated productivity systems or the longest working hours. They're the ones that focus on outcomes rather than activities.

Maybe the real productivity hack isn't another app or optimization technique. Maybe it's figuring out what helpful unproductivity looks like for each of us personally.

Because in our quest to optimize every moment, we might just be optimizing ourselves out of the very creativity and sustainability that true productivity requires.

The irony is fascinating: to be more productive, we might need to care a little less about being productive.