# Productivity is BOTH Pointless AND Purposeful... ?!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKS0U86ejS8

[00:00] so why the hell am I actually so obsessed with efficiency
[00:04] I'm glad you asked
[00:04] nobody efficiency for me is a topic that I hold very close to hot and it almost sounds like a joke but it's it's really not
[00:14] because it comes down for me to the value of my time in my life
[00:17] now the way that I see it and and this will also come down to you know the reasons why I lift medicine as well is that there's a certain amount of calories that I'm eating
[00:29] okay and I bet this is not the way that you expected this story to start
[00:33] there's a certain amount of calories that I'm eating and then what I do with those calories is called my life
[00:39] I don't want that particular calorie burn to have been spent on something that's menial
[00:47] I don't want it just to be calories and calories out
[00:50] I want to be able to leverage that you know I want to be the the lever point where when the calories come in the impact that it can
[01:02] produce is greater than what it was in its pure energy form and I want that impact to be significant and as a result I really value my time ultimately because I value my life and it's not because I see it as some kind of cosmic reason anyone that's had a conversation about this with me before knows that I'm very much so into the idea of basically like futile sort of absurd as a meaningful futility so the idea that at the end of the day there isn't really a purpose or point to anything however it doesn't mean that I can't assign a purpose and a point for my own life it doesn't mean that I can't look for a meaning that I find fulfillment and even though I know that at a universal scale nothing really matters so that's kind of
[02:04] my perspective of it but even then I still want to use my life in the best way that's possible without having to well I suppose I don't want to say you know like siddle for what I can do but in a way kind of changing my standards based on my capacity or my ability I want to have a standard that I'm that I'm able to reach and and strive to reach and regardless of whether I'm you know reaching it or not right so I put something on my Instagram a while back about Sisyphus and the boda and that the Greek myth goes by the way if you're not following me on Instagram you should definitely do that dr. Justin Sun the the Greek myth goes that that Sisyphus was a king who tricked the gods and and ended up escaping his death and I think twice and then Zeus punished Sisyphus and condemned him into rolling this
[03:06] boulder up a hill in Hades for all of eternity.
[03:09] as soon as the Botev reaches the top of the hill or Oh back down and Sisyphus needs to go back get that rock and then push this heavy boda up the hill up and down constantly and that is almost like a metaphor of futility itself.
[03:23] but what I think it was Albert Camus said about this and wrote a very famous essay on was that well maybe maybe supposed to smiling as he does this maybe he's enjoying it the gods condemned him to be punished they didn't condemn him to hate it.
[03:41] maybe the purpose isn't the boulder to be at the top of the hill.
[03:45] maybe the purpose is the act of rolling it maybe that's the point.
[03:50] and so that idea of meaningful futility that that shirt that I wore in some my previous videos where they say the man some of you might recognize that as this painting called the wanderer above the sea of fog which is one of my favorite paintings at the moment because it
[04:07] Represents a man standing at the top of a mountain with his huge feeling of kind of accomplishment and and and there's a sense of achievement there.
[04:15] And at the top what this man can see is that he's standing in a sea of fog with countless other mountains in this landscape of just you know mountains peeking above a sea of fog and it gives a sense of almost futility and insignificance to his huge achievement.
[04:30] And so that idea or something that I personally subscribed to and so I make it a task for myself to well regardless find a way to live life meaningfully and have meaning because of the fact that I'd rather not just kill myself and and that's really what it comes down to is because I I want to live I might as well find meaning for it.
[04:54] Otherwise not doing anything because of the fact of cosmic futility means that there's really not a lot of enjoyment left in life so in a roundabout way that search for meaning and purpose is what
[05:09] drives me to place this value on my own time and my life and then the question then becomes what can I do during that time what can I be leveraging and what can i buy what can I be achieving and if there's lots of things that I want to do then well I want to do those things about how can I do those things when there are the necessities of life and the only real answer is either you make more time presumably not by bending the laws of the universe but by finding time and creating opportunities that you can have more activities or you get more efficient at what you're doing so that what you're doing takes less time and you're creating time that way and that is essentially what efficiency is and so there are a lot of people out there and actually I'm really surprisingly large number of people I've noticed from kind of you know being in this space and having these discussions very often who
[06:11] are principally opposed to the idea of seeking high efficiency because it's just not part of their identity.
[06:17] it's like not something that they do it's not a type of mentality that someone like them has whatever identity they've sculpted for themselves it doesn't fit.
[06:28] now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that what I am saying is that those same people I have and this person maybe you may have certain problems or dissatisfactions in life where the solution would be to increase efficiency to take certain steps in order to mobilize more time and resources and create energy and create fuel and fire and all of these things may be the requirement in order to achieve this other thing.
[07:04] so it's like okay look you've either got two options here you either need to well I guess you've got three options and the first one is you
[07:11] just don't do anything and continue to dislike it and be dissatisfied or you accept that you will never do this and you settle for that or you increase your efficiency and achieve that now none of these paths are inherently right or wrong and coming back to the idea that all of these paths are inherently futile so there's no right or wrong but it's you know if if you are on a path of dissatisfaction and you'd rather not give it up and not be dissatisfied then there's only path the only part that's left open is the one of increasing and and pushing for efficiency and I think there's a feeling of sort of overwhelm that a lot of people get when they think about increasing their efficiency maybe because they've already tried so many things and has already failed so many times and I know there's a saying that goes that the master has tried more
[08:12] times in the beginner sorry the master has failed more times and the beginner has even tried and I definitely believe that but it's not particularly useful to say to someone when they just don't give a and they're just in this daily grind where they just can't bring themselves to be doing something about it and I really don't believe that it's it's about motivation I really think that a lot of things get attributed to motivations but it's more about identity and alignment and relevance and relevance to that identity if you take any individual who wants to do something and then you just you know point a gun to their head or you know to all of their loved ones and you say gonna do this Oh everyone dies suddenly that person becomes really motivated because it became relevant it became personally relevant there was a real consequence associated with it and I think motivation is pretty much when there is of relevance to an activity and the consequence is perceived and when that cycle is formed motivation is sort
[09:13] of developed there is a fear of loss
[09:15] that's driving and even even when people
[09:20] are motivated to gain something well the
[09:22] the gain is not as if okay you can be
[09:25] motivated to become really rich but the
[09:27] thing is what you want is not money what
[09:29] you want is the feeling that you have
[09:32] for yourself when you have that money
[09:35] what you want is the feeling of being
[09:37] able to buy things you want the feeling
[09:40] of financial freedom it's not that money
[09:42] in itself is what you want that's you
[09:45] know meaningless so in that way what you
[09:51] want is not the thing it's how that
[09:54] thing makes you feel and so the
[09:56] motivation is encasing that because
[09:59] you're afraid of not having that feeling
[10:03] so you know motivation almost as I feel
[10:06] is kind of like procrastination it's
[10:08] given this name because there's a
[10:10] certain sort of syndrome or like a you
[10:14] know a cluster of things associated with it but it's actually a very complicated manifestation of a lot of underlying things and each of those underlying things can be tackled so coming back to the point a lot of people I feel a bit overwhelmed at tackling this potentially due to some previous bad experiences or they haven't been successful about things in the past and they are struggling to motivate themselves then I think the first question that needs to be asked is who do you see yourself as what is the identity one of the things that are important to you what are the values and the goals that you have and when I say goals I'm not talking about like SMART goals it doesn't even have to be that specific I just mean where do you want to see yourself going what's the direction you want to hit what's the line you want to take the path you want to lead when you look back what's the life that it should have painted not that anyone really knows but at least try to you know envision and then what needs to happen in order for
[11:14] these to be fulfilled are those things possible for you to achieve right now.
[11:22] if the answer is No are you happy and content was doing something differently and valuing something else and missing out on that without being dissatisfied.
[11:32] if the answer is yes then you can pivot.
[11:35] if the answer is no then the path that's left open is that you need to be doing these other things.
[11:41] I feel that and in the conversations that I've had with students and mentees and professionals in the past is that this type of thinking is something that is difficult for people to do and they don't normally do it unless you're already kind of abstract introverted introspective type of person you don't really think about where my life is going and how my actions are aligning to it and all that sort of stuff but when you really pin down specifically who you see yourself as and where you want to go and you make it really R what needs to happen and the consequence of failure that may just be
[12:16] the thing that sparks the motivation necessary to take that step to becoming more efficient.
[12:22] and when I say efficient I just mean you now have a car to drive that gets you to where you want to go.
[12:31] instead of wanting to go to the same place regardless but just running there and inevitably failing.
[12:37] so when their foresight is applied and the inevitable failure is perceived and that failure is not tolerable then efficiency is the key.
[12:51] and this is something that I feel about a lot of things about my life and and as a result I'm I feel like I'm always said.
[13:01] I'm obsessed with efficiency not because of the sake of efficiency but because I highly highly value the impact that it has on my life and what it allows me and empowers me to actually do.
[13:14] I don't want to be in a position where
[13:17] there's something that I'm really interested in doing and that I want to do as one of the things in my life that I get to say like I did this and then because of a lack of time not being able to do it that doesn't sit well with me for me personally and if it's it's okay with you that's fine there's there's nothing at all wrong with that even in the slightest and there's a culture of pursuing efficiency and personal development and and all of that but it's not for everyone it's only for the people that think that it's relevant to them what I'm saying is give yourself the opportunity to understand whether it is relevant for you and if you decide that it's not that's okay but don't trick yourself in this thing thinking that it's not for you when really deep down when you apply more thought to it it could be and maybe that's the thing that you'll be missing this entire time and you know maybe that will be the
[14:19] First step for you for that very long complicated journey of becoming a more efficient and productive and what that results in a more fulfilled human.
[14:38] [Music]