Being busy is not being productive.


As long as I can remember, I thought productivity was a matter of how busy a person is; while less time or more tasks are completed in a short period of time, the better. I attempted to emulate the same 'perfect' routine of some YouTube gurus, which ensures that the secret recipe of productivity is waking up as early as possible, preferably 5am.


Obviously, I failed abruptly when I tried to emulate the perfect routine. I felt tired, and in a matter of some weeks, I left that strict practice. I started to feel hurried for no reason. In some way, I needed to wake up early, then begin to run and do my task as fast as I could, but I started to feel that the nonsense of chronogram didn't have a purpose.


Why do I wake up so early if, after 11 am, I don't have anything to do during the day? Why do I hurry to do things fast, and why do I need to be busy to feel satisfied? The sense of doing something or completing some task brought me to do things without purpose just by not feeling guilty about having free time.


I auto imposed myself a strict schedule, which didn't help me at all. I had the pressure of doing something just to fill the emptiness and the discomfort of staying with my thoughts; soon, I discovered that instead of being productive, I was doing nonsense shit.


Wasting time is equally damaging than doing things that you don't enjoy, just for public pressure. In a world that claims success, we have an obligation to stay occupied, trying to figure out how to solve problems that don't even exist.


The productivity trap is real and is indeed a distraction but with a fancy name. Discipline with no purpose is like a hamster running in a cage; you can feel that you are doing something important, but you don't.


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