A little while ago I posted a productivity tip and immediately started worrying that I sounded like one of those awful productivity gurus who preach maximum productivity all day every day what do you mean leisure has value?

I want to be very clear here: my worth as a human being is not measured by how much stuff I get done and neither is yours. My sole interest in productivity is breaking the shame spiral.

The shame spiral I’m talking about is the horrible feedback loop where you procrastinate, feel ashamed of not getting enough done, procrastinate more because you associate the work with shame, feeling more ashamed because you’re still not getting anything done and on and on. I don’t want you to be the perfect [insert work here]-producing machine, I want you to be happy and to feel good about what you’ve done at the end of the day. In fact, I actively want you to not be a perfect work-producing machine because that’s no way to live. If you don’t enjoy your life and have time for friends and family (chosen or assigned) and hobbies it doesn’t matter how much you get done.

You will never ever hear productivity tips from me about shit like how much work you can get done if you start waking up at 5 am or how you should listen to professional development audiobooks on your commute. You are allowed to listen to music and relax on your way to work. You do not have to cram something useful into every minute of every day.

A question I hardly ever see anyone ask in articles or blog posts about productivity is why you want to be more productive. Everyone just assumes that getting more done must automatically be a good thing. Getting stuff done is a great feeling if it’s something important to you and you’re not pushing yourself into burnout, but you know what else is great? Downtime. Playing a boardgame with your friends or trying out a new restaurant or going for a walk or reading a novel.

Personally, I do feel unfulfilled if I do nothing but play computer games when I come home from work for too many days in a row. I like the sense of accomplishment that comes from making progress on personal projects. But just like computer games can’t be my whole life, neither can work. That’s just not healthy and that lack of perspective leads to shitty work anyway.

Before you look at a productivity tip, ask yourself why you want to get more done. If you have a project that you want to finish, great! But if you feel guilty if you’re not doing something useful every minute of every day or you don’t want your parents to be disappointed in you or you feel like you’ll be left behind if you don’t spend every minute working, you officially have my permission to say “Fuck it, I’m going to go play videogames.” Don’t be productive for the sake of being productive, do stuff that’s either personally meaningful to you or fun.