I recently had a day that ended up having nothing planned. It was a bit of an accident as I had actually been planning to be on the road to Montana to visit family. However, I was recovering from a cold and had been out a bit late the previous night. I ended up sleeping in and realized there was really no reason I had to be on the road or in any particular hurry to get to Montana. There was nothing time sensitive I had to be there for and no one waiting on me. Given all of this, I decided to take an extra day to rest and pushed off my departure to the next day. I had done most of my packing already, so pretty much had a day of unstructured time ahead of me. I read, napped, talked with Jocelyn. It was restful and pretty much exactly what I needed. And yet, there was a nagging feeling that I should be doing something “productive”. It’s a feeling I’ve become well acquainted with since leaving my tech career five months ago. So it got me thinking, where does this feeling of guilt around failing to be productive originate? Why, in the American culture, do we tie our self worth to productivity? What does it look like to live outside of that narrative?
I believe our cultural obsession with productivity extends from our cultural obsession with money and consumption. The more productive one is, so the story goes, the more money one can amass, and the more one can consume. Consumption in turn leads to status, happiness, and a sense of self-worth. I think most of us sense this story is hollow at some level, but it’s hard to see the water you’re swimming in. What the story never tells us is where to stop. More is always the answer and as a result we ourselves are never enough.
So, one way to get out of the water is to figure out what enough is. For me, that started with a number. That number is what amount of money is enough for me to live the life of freedom, adventure, and purpose that I want to live. In her book, “Your Money or Your Life”, Vicki Robin introduces the concept of the fulfillment curve. The idea is that more money brings more fulfillment up to a certain level. Once survival, some comforts, and a few luxuries are within reach, more money and more consumption start to bring less and less fulfillment until at some point, more actually starts to decrease fulfillment in terms of clutter, maintenance, and the stress of keeping up. Where that point is will be very different for everyone. However, it does require determining what you actually want and what level of income allows you to have that. It has to be an internal yardstick. If you’re measuring off of what other people have or think you should have, then it will never be enough. In the words of Peter McWilliams, “You can have anything in life you really want – but you can’t have everything in life you really want. Decide.” For us, the number is about $70,000 a year. That allows us to do everything we want to do without feeling deprived. Income past that point doesn’t bring any more fulfillment and therefore, once we can attain that income through investments and work we enjoy, there’s no need to keep striving for more. We can get out of the water and direct our efforts to travel, nurturing relationships, creating art, spending time in nature — the things that bring us real fulfillment and purpose, not the treadmill of earning, spending, and consumption. But, determining that number and stepping off the treadmill turned out to be the easy part.
Even after answering the external enough question and solving for it in my own life, I’m still sometimes left with the productivity guilt like I experienced on that day before leaving for my trip. The same story that ties productivity to money, consumption, and fulfillment, also ties it to something deeper, self-worth. It tells us that our value as a person is tied to what we produce. I stepped off that external treadmill when I identified my enough number and left traditional employment, but the internal questioning about my value as a person kept running.
I’m still working on how to deal with this, but I think part of the answer lies in redefining what productivity actually means. Separated from the cultural story around money and consumption, productivity looks different. To me, it means being useful to the people I love, fulfilling my responsibilities to them, and contributing to things larger than myself. Vicki Robin puts it well: “Beyond the point of enough, we achieve happiness by exercising our capacity to give”. So, the work of maintaining our household, volunteering, and even something as simple as lending an ear to a friend who’s having a problem are all productive pursuits in this framing. Being of service is one of my core values, and by that measure I’m contributing plenty. But even this reframe has limits. It still doesn’t get at the deeper question of intrinsic worth outside of any external factor, outside of doing anything.
In Buddhism there is the concept of “Buddha Nature” — the idea that every being already possesses innate worth and wisdom,not as something to be earned or demonstrated but as a fundamental condition of existence. The Stoics like Epictetus and Seneca say that worth comes from internal character and choices, not from outputs and that an examined, present life has inherent value regardless of what it produces. All of these concepts offer a framework for thinking about this, but they are easier to grasp than to live. Living into them is the work ahead of me.
That day before my trip, I eventually let go and stopped fighting the guilt. I let the day be what it was. I read my book, took a nap, and enjoyed a few more hours with my wife before a long absence. I felt refreshed and ready for the road in a way I wouldn’t have if I had filled the day with tasks. Rest and connection with those we love are worthwhile. They are enough. I may not always be productive in the traditional sense, but I’m slowly learning that what I am doing is enough. And more importantly, so am I.
The Crooked Trail 
Leave a comment