Living within the Paradox

Welcoming the tensions of daily life

For the past few months, I have been working with this idea of the Productivity Paradox. It’s a talk that I have given a few times this year.

The core message is that as we push ourselves to become more efficient, we become less effective. We have reduced productivity to simply "getting things done."

Ironically, the tools that promise to make us more productive often do the opposite. They fragment our attention and inevitably become time-wasters rather than time-savers.

To do our best work and live our most productive lives, we should use technology to support us. However, we often end up hostage to these tools because there is no clear boundary between the human experience and the digital experience.

This idea links to what I was thinking about today: paradoxes are a constant presence in life.

We are always dealing with opposing forces within us, and part of the journey of life is to become aware of and accept that this tension will always exist within us and is something to be embraced.

On this occasion, I recorded a video about this because speaking about it felt more alive than writing about it.