The prevalance of productivity porn

I may be overgeneralizing based on my own experience and a vocal minority online. Still, I believe productivity porn is hugely popular, in particular among people with careers in software development. First of all, what even is productivity porn? Strictly speaking, productivity porn refers to productivity (fluff) content and its consumption. More broadly though, the way I see it, engaging in productivity porn is excessively and obsessively (thinking about) optimizing one’s productivity. And there already lies the essence of the paradox. Am I actually being productive by spending hours upon hours tweaking application settings to shave off seconds in a workflow or arranging notes and documents to be in neat order?

However, whether we can classify these activities as productive or not is not what makes it fit or not within the realm of productivity porn. Why call it porn? The nature of the act, the motivation for it, the element of addiction is the key factor. Examining my own urges, I find my desire to tweak an editor’s configuration or organize my notes into neat categories to be of compulsive nature most of the time. Ok, so what’s the problem if you’re having fun, you may say? Am I though, having fun? Or is it the mere satisfaction of a craving, that pretends to be fun? Is it an easy, a relaxing activity with great purpose, or am I actually spending significant effort for neglible gains?

It’s not my intention to judge other people’s motivations or sense of achievement with regard to optimizing productivity. For myself though, I am increasingly weary of my desires to neatly organize, track, and optimize. I have long neglected the underlying pressure that builds up through this process. That is, the pressure to perform, to be efficient. That’s a real negative impact, however subtle it may be, in addition to the questionable gains. It’s a never-ending cycle of tweaking this and tweaking that, which ultimately neither feels meaningful nor contributes to me fealing at ease.

To conclude, I find it valuable to pay attention to the nature of my motivations for productivity optimizations. It may very well be necessary at times and pay off in terms of increasing my efficiency and actually making me satisfied about the reduced effort. As long as the act is measured and intentional with a clear goal, I don’t see it falling within the realm of productivity porn. More often though, it’s an obsessive impulse that is better put aside.