Is productivity only about what you get done? The Productivity Establishment says yes, and doesn’t care whether you use willpower, discipline, or managing your feelings, the only three answers they offer for getting yourself to do it.
I say different. Productivity is not only about what you get done. How you get it done is also important, especially for your future productivity. Willpower, discipline, and managing your feelings all leave resistance (the internal ‘no’) in place. Neutralizing it does not.
One insidious form of resistance is called ‘numbing out’.
Numbing out works in two ways. It can keep us from doing what we need or want to do. And it can keep us from feeling what we are feeling.
The first way is obvious. You want to research online business opportunities. Instead, every evening you settle onto the couch and watch movies until bedtime. The research stays on the list, and that project is going nowhere fast.
The second way is less obvious, because from the outside everything looks fine. The work is getting done. The calendar is cleared. But there are feelings you don’t want to feel, so you find some way you can ignore them.
Your boss is an idiot and you hate your job. Those feelings are stressful. How to de-stress? You eat the whole pizza. Yum, that was good. You drink the whole six-pack instead of just two. The stress floats away into a fuzzy glow of comfort.
You are dreading this afternoon’s meeting with a difficult client. Must.Get.Rid.Of.This.Feeling. On your lunch hour, you buy a $2,200 purse you can’t afford. Dread? What dread? You are so high from acquiring the long-desired item you would happily meet with Dracula after lunch.
Competition for scarce resources at work terrifies you, in case it’s your project that gets cut. To insulate yourself from the feeling you start working out five days a week instead of your usual two. Now you’re too exhausted to feel much of anything. But you look great.
Most resistance is a “no” to something we need or want to do. This kind is a “no” to something we’re already experiencing: the feeling itself. We are rejecting our reality.
And it’s slippery, because so much of it feels good. We call it relaxing. We call it a reward for all the work we got done. Sometimes it is. But relaxing is something you do for itself. Numbing out is something you do so you don’t have to do or feel something, often something you couldn’t name if someone asked. You decide to relax. You find yourself numbing out.
It doesn’t even have to look like pleasure. Some people fill every waking hour with work, so there is never a quiet moment for the feeling to arrive. Some people numb out on the couch. Some people numb out at their desks. Only one of them gets praised for it.
Which raises a fair question. If everything is getting done, what’s the problem?
The problem is that the feeling doesn’t leave. Numbing turns it down for a while, but it will eventually come back, simmering and stewing underneath the surface until it erupts at the least ideal moment: the snap at a colleague in the meeting, the blank mind on the client call, the feelings of panic the morning the budget decisions come down. The bill for ignoring all those feelings has arrived.
Numbing out is an attempt to get rid of uncomfortable feelings. The establishment teaches you to regulate a feeling until it gives you permission to act. Numbing turns it down until you can’t feel it. Either way, it isn’t resolved, and the resistance stays exactly where it was.
There is another way. The feeling is reality and has a right to be there like any other reality. But that doesn’t mean it should be running the show. When the resistance is neutralized, there is nothing left to numb, and no reason to reach for the pizza, the purse, or the extra workout. What’s left is acceptance, and acceptance of feelings is as crucial as acceptance of tasks, events, and people.
Staying un-numbed,
Alessandra