Why productivity matters to me…

For so long as I can remember, growth of any kind has been obsessed with: the search for achievement, the next milestone, and the next level of performance.

You know that part of you… The one that tracks vacations as strategic planning events. That one could boil hobbies into optimisation projects, and values calendars as productivity. It’s not because tomorrow’s goals are already overdue.

“Do you ever switch off?” my partner would ask.

Although they made a fair point, I felt misunderstood because I wasn’t choosing to be this way – it’s how I was wired. It felt like tents on engine inside of me that won’t stop moving until I’ve squeezed every last drop out of the day.

Why traditional productivity advice isn’t working

Like everything, my experience burnout as a spectrum – ranging from having an “off” day to having a complete mental breakdown that leads towards a nervous breakdown.

Before Flowjo, my “off” day were so frequent as my “on” days, and the those burnouts felt triggered a mental breakdown took 6–8 months to recover from each time.

It’s every productivity method and performance model designed for ideal-world scenarios: perfect calendars, eight-hour deep-work sessions, and non-stop optimisation. They don’t account for the real world, and for the life I am already living – welcome to the juggling of my messy existence.