Productivity Is a Lie I Tell Myself

Every evening I make a small and touching plan for tomorrow.

I will start early. I will answer the important messages first. I will protect two quiet hours. I will finish one difficult thing before lunch. There may even be a proper break.

Then tomorrow arrives with a calendar, three “quick questions”, a document that apparently needs my eyes rather than anyone else’s, and one problem that has been quietly travelling through the organisation until it finds the person least willing to let it fail.

At 18:30 I look back at a day containing a lot of motion, several rescues and no relationship whatsoever with the plan.

Still, I call myself productive. It is kinder than calling the system feral.