Structure, the core & the beauty of being unproductive

Human beings aren't meant to be structured.

we're not!! And yet we spend so much time obsessing over and trying to bring structure to all the things that are connected to our lives.

We also spend a vast amount of time, consuming content that one can only term as "Productivity porn". I know a lot about this because I suffer from an immense need to consume this kind of content. Nothing gets my attention that a clickbait title like " 10 ways to..." or " How I..." or my Achilles heel " the secret method..". My eyes spot one of these as I'm scrolling through content and BOOM, you'll find me 2 hours later going deep down the rabbit hole of "someone who used minimalism to make their morning ritual a productive launchpad for their passion project", I'm exaggerating but you get my point ( although that does seem like a very interesting idea for a video).

We spend so much time trying to add structure and our mind which is innately irrational spends as much trying to fight the constraints of this structure and what we end up with is more time building structure and less time accomplishing the act itself.

But, we cant not have any structure right? So how do we find the sweet spot between the rational and irrational sides of our minds? The realisation I've personally come to is to not look at it as a structured act...like below

what it needs to be and this isn't a hack or a system but more a visual representation of a realisation is something like this ( this is how my goal board looks at most times)

because what we need is an Irrational matrix with rough edges, stuff thrown around, a scattered set of thoughts, pointers and things to do. This allows our minds to find it open for flexibility and yet not so out of control as to leave us confused.

to be rationally irrational is to be human, so why should a checklist or a plan of action be any different.?

Now that we've gotten the basic concept in place, let's think about how this can apply to how you do things from a macro point of view, to work towards the things you want to do and achieve...

The core

We all have that one thing we want to work towards and achieve, it's at most times a moving goalpost but there is always something which takes on the focus of being our North Star. And in the spirit of building a roadmap to achieve this, we give ourselves (most times) a linear set of steps to achieve this over time.

But, what if we applied the irrational matrix to achieving this goal? It'll look less like a roadmap and more like a galaxy... with a central mass ( our core focus), multiple stars ( our big ideas), planets, moons and other such bodies ( our interests, actions and scattered points of significance ). Everything plays a part in balancing the central core ( my science in this theory might not entirely be accurate but look at this more as an exercise to visualise ).

So, what does this mean? It means that we need to look at what we want to achieve as something that will eventually be achieved by a scattered set of acts we do along the journey, these will not have a linear flow at most times and will be scattered across the timeline of our lives.. but will eventually add up to the core that we want to achieve.

So, is it about big ideas and actions to achieve the goal? Or a set of smaller actions over an elongated period? The way to look at it is to do a scattering of both that adds up to bring balance to our goals (the core) and keep the process evolving and fluid because life at its most satisfactory and productive is organised chaos.

The beauty of being unproductive

A lot of what I've written about this week might seem like an exercise in being productive in an unproductive form. And in many ways seems to be counter to what we've come to understand as the way to work towards things. But as Tim Ferris once said

"Not everything that is meaningful can be measured"

and in a similar light, not everything that we work towards or do needs to be in a measured, structured, overtly-planned endeavour. There is a beauty to being optimally unproductive and its often not measured in progress but happiness & satisfaction.

So, spend some time being unproductive, irrational and unplanned this week. It might just help balance your core.

✌🏽