On Productivity

In the DC area, spring has been caught in the battle between winter and summer as temperatures range from lows slightly above freezing to highs typical of July. In a way, this reflects my week and more broadly, my start to this year, as I find myself also fluctuating between feelings, expectations, and happenings in this first half of 2026. In fact, the first four months of my year have felt like the engine is still warming up.

January is always a hibernation month, as I like to call it, but since then, I haven’t felt as creative as last year, I haven’t traveled yet this year, and although I have had concentrated spurts of activity, I suppose I haven’t felt that productive. But I’ve really started to question what productivity means, and what it looks like at different stages of life. This was especially prompted by a conversation with a family friend who is a psychologist, shortly after coming out of my last full-time role, in which I told her I was enjoying my non-working time, but it might not seem so productive to others. Her questions: “What is productivity? How do we determine what is productive?”

Reviewing the past four months, I have been navigating many types of transition and opportunity, and isn’t that productive? I haven’t channeled my focus creatively as much as I’d like (this is only my second essay in four months), but I’ve also been working through intense feelings tied to close relationships in my life that have been changing, and some days, this takes everything I’ve got. But isn’t just making it through those days productive?

Recently, I was watching Trevor Noah’s new comedy special, Joy in the Trenches, in which he asks an important question: “Who will you be when history calls?” Now, answering this is another essay entirely, but here’s how it relates to my point. He goes on to present examples of people — from civil rights activists encountering their innumerable beating at a sit-in to World War II soldiers trading jokes while crouched in trenches for days on end — who continued to pour consistent effort into a cause during a time of tribulation, with no guarantee that their efforts would work. It dawned on me while watching the special that I absolutely consider those people and their actions productive. Today, we can look back and almost easily affirm this, because we are living in the outcome. But while showing up regularly, consistently, through violent, abysmal conditions, hoping to accomplish something, these people had no tangible evidence that what they were doing was working. I wonder if they ever questioned their productivity.

Reflecting my main theme for 2026 — freedom — I’ve embraced slower living, which feels rebellious in a world that rewards doing more and more with less and less time. The paradox of advancement is that some things we now consider luxuries are the result of time-saving technologies adapted for the faster pace of life these days. In a world where everything keeps moving faster, slower living is a luxury (although it was once a normal part of life, albeit much more hard-lived). How fortunate to use this opportunity in history to remember my most human qualities and apply them to the tasks that matter most to me. And isn’t that productive?

A couple months ago, during a down moment, I asked a gifted tarot-reading friend of mine three questions to help guide me through my feelings. The first was, “What do I need to release?” The message she relayed is one I continue returning to: “Let go of the mental urgency and the need to charge forward at full speed…release the anxiety that mistakes speed for progress.”

This same friend has reminded me (frequently since January) that it’s only the first half of the year. Everything doesn’t have to happen now. As another artist friend put it, “gestating and open to inspiration” is also productive. These reassurances reminded me of the idea I encountered in The Artist’s Way last year that one’s commitment to a journey and a habit of identity has more impact on how they view themselves than developing the skill characteristic of that identity. In a full circle moment, this brings me back to a point I made in an earlier essay on being committed to the practice: we control our practice, not our outcomes, and while practice won’t always lead to perfect, it’s in the consistent practice that growth or progress happens.

Perhaps my challenge, then, is in recommitting to my own practice(s) in a variety of categories, but especially releasing the anxious grip on my need to understand or influence outcomes beyond my control, as a productive step in the direction of greater fulfillment.

Recommended Reading, Watching, Listening:

• The Lora Studio: Say When
  Laura Valenti

• The Artist’s Way
  Julia Cameron

• Watch: Trevor Noah: Joy in the Trenches (Netflix)

• Listen: Billie Eilish: What Was I Made For

Prompts:

• What is productivity to you? Could your definition expand?

• In shifting your focus away from outcomes, what practice(s) could you instead focus on in areas of life that may feel less productive?