Stop Being Productive (And Get Your Life Back)

Let’s get one thing straight: The problem with the productivity craze isn’t that it doesn’t work No, it’s far worse. It works too damn well, turning you into a soulless automaton, a cog in a machine of your own making.

You know the drill. Every last ounce of your existence gets streamlined, gamified, and turned into a goddamn checklist. Your life isn’t lived; it’s a spreadsheet. Every minute becomes a performance metric, and even your “rest” is scheduled, tracked, and guilt-tripped into submission. You think you’re living? You’re just another data point.

Trust me, I wore the t-shirt:

• My mornings were military drills designed to crush my spirit by 9 a.m. Mission accomplished.
• I skipped a family vacation in my thirties—not because I didn’t want to go, but because it wasn’t “productive.” Yeah, I’m still trying to unpack that one in therapy.
• My weekends? Just overflow from the crap I couldn’t squeeze into my 16-hour “work” days. Days I should have spent recharging, connecting, and remembering what it felt like to be human. Instead, I was a zombie, chasing an invisible finish line.

And here’s the kicker, the dirty little secret I used to wear like a badge of honor: “I work 16 hours a day.” What a load of self-important bullshit. When I actually tracked my time, it was maybe—and I mean a BIG maybe—five hours of actual, focused work. The other eleven? Pure, unadulterated avoidance, masquerading as effort.

Here’s the truth no one with a productivity course to sell will ever tell you: Most people who think they’re overworked are just spectacularly under-focused. We’ve confused being busy with being effective, and it’s contagious.

Look around, you. Most efficiency “gurus” and productivity tools are just teaching you how to be a more efficient robot. How to plow through more tasks. But stop and ask yourself, for once in your optimized life: Are you even doing the right tasks? And more importantly, are those tasks truly worthy of your valuable time and energy?

Because if you’re being productive on the wrong things, that’s not progress. That’s just distraction with a damn good PR team, and you’re buying into the hype.

Your Life Doesn’t Need to Be Easier, It Needs to Be Simpler

Forget the endless hacks and the relentless pursuit of “more.” Let me offer a radical concept: Your life doesn’t need to be easier; it needs to be simpler.

The truly successful people I know aren’t juggling seven income streams from day one. They got laser-focused on one goddamn thing, made it work, and then—only then—built from there. Yeah, I know what you might be thinking: “But Ricardo, the average millionaire has seven income streams!” Sure, now. But they didn’t start that way. They didn’t start by trying to conquer the world before they could even tie their shoes.

And here’s the insidious poison productivity culture doesn’t warn you about: You slowly, painstakingly become a version of yourself that’s absolutely no fun to be around. (Been there, done that, bought the miserable t-shirt.) Everything becomes a transaction. Every moment has to “earn” its place on your overstuffed calendar. You optimize so much for future enjoyment that you forget how to enjoy anything in the goddamn present.

I used to be that insufferable guy at the party—rolling my eyes at anyone “wasting time” if they weren’t talking about business or “mindset.” And you know what dawned on me? Most people are desperately trying to fix their life using the very same broken thinking that shattered it in the first place. They’re just rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship, convinced a new to-do list will save them.

The point isn’t to do more. It’s to do less—intentionally—so you can actually, for the love of all that’s un-optimized, live.

When you finally let go of the soul-crushing pressure to make every minute “productive,” you start to breathe again. You start to laugh again. You start to think again. And that’s when the real ideas, the breakthroughs, the flashes of brilliance show up—not when you’re grinding yourself into dust. They emerge when you’re walking, when you’re resting, when you’re simply living.

Most people are running east, frantically searching for a sunset.

So slow down. Look around. The whole reason you ever wanted to be “productive” in the first place was to feel alive, to truly experience the wonderful, messy, imperfect moments the present has to offer.

Don’t miss it. Don’t let your “productivity” bury your life.