Productivity Is Not Fulfillment
Musing on the word "productivity." We use it to mean how well you do things, but really it's more like how efficiently you get things done. These two virtues are not equally imporant.
In an age of capitalism, the productivity=efficiency paradigm makes sense. Output is what's valuable, literally. The number goes up and you pat yourself on the back. But does productivity give me more meaning? Maybe, if it means I spend less time or energy to accomplish a fixed set of responsibilities. Then I can put the spare time and energy into something meaningful.
That said, when I think of "productivity" I don't think of my work life. I think of how to optimize my personal projects. How do I learn a skill well, or streamline working on such-and-such project? In these domains, productivity is probably a poor metric — if I'm even in a situation worth measuring.
As I use the term in my self-talk, "productivity" is a proxy for confidence in my abilities. Yet, I care about whether I can do a thing enjoyably, not about optimizing the amount of thing that I do. My satisfaction with a project depends on the quality of its output, a little on how much I learned doing it, and hardly at all on how little effort I can put in. Hell, it's the opposite: I'm only proud if I worked for it. Particularly with AI trivializing high-volume, low-quality output, I'm sure I'm not alone.
Value the journey over the destination; productivity does not belong in your personal life.