🥳 Hey, fam! Welcome to the A Better Jones newsletter and community — the home for anyone wanting to live a more meaningful, purpose-driven, courageous life.
Every 1-2 weeks, I share a story and step-by-step framework to help you evolve into a stronger, more resilient, more adaptive human.
Also, I occasionally share links to articles, products, or books I recommend. Sometimes they are affiliate links. If you use the link to purchase something, just know you’re supporting this newsletter and me. And I appreciate it.
If there is ever a way I can help you, just leave a comment, reply, or slide into the DMs. I’m here for you.
In love and growth ❤️
Kasey
In this Week’s Issue:
A Poll: Thinking about a new newsletter offering
Quick Update: Thanks for your concern
Growth Insight: The Point of Productivity
A Quick Update
Three weeks ago, I shared some incredibly personal — and challenging — news about my health and a potential cancer diagnosis. And you all were so kind and caring to reach out.
The good news? I do not have cancer! I have a whole mess of symptoms that they still haven’t quite figured out, but still, no cancer. And for that, I am supremely grateful.
There is nothing like a potential cancer diagnosis to give you some valuable perspective on life.
Growth Insight: What is the purpose of productivity?
As someone driven to do more, be more, affect more in my life, I’ve long been interested in, and at times a little obsessed, with productivity. Reading Atomic Habits and learning James Clear’s concept of small actions that lead to explosive results felt like a transformative experience. Intentionally designing my life to support my desired output made logical sense to me.
Hell, the idea felt unassailable.
Right? How could any rational person disagree?
After all, don’t each of us want to live lives of meaning, of impact, of worth? And wouldn’t it make logical sense to engineer your life to support your ability to do more of what matters? That just makes sense, right?
But as I’ve gotten older, I have not only learned a few things about myself and the world that shift my thinking but also noticed that my focus on productivity hasn’t necessarily yielded the kind of results I want.
What’s more, I’m realizing I am not alone in that.
What drives our focus on productivity?
If you know me at all, which I hope by now, you do, or at least feel like you do, you know I am a reader.
One of the single most impactful books I’ve read in the last 6 months or so is Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I first listened to an interview with Hari that not only made me laugh out loud but made my brain positively buzz with curiosity.
Hari’s book is a deep discovery into our rapid pace of life and why so many of us struggle to focus — kids in school, adults at work and at the dinner table, and all of us in our day-to-day lives.
You’d think the book would be all about addictive technology and the constant dopamine hits from social media. And yes, that’s part of it, but he proves it goes much deeper than that.
He talks about how we all sleep less, read less, and allow our minds to wander less. Our brains are constantly stimulated, making it harder for us to digest complex concepts, solve challenging problems, or make meaningful changes in our lives, communities, and world.
When we notice the symptoms of these struggles, we seek out productivity strategies to solve them.
But the world is engineered to reinforce them.
"This is a systemic problem. The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world's attention burns." Johann Hari
I won’t get political with you, but Hari makes a damning case that the powers that be — governments and, more importantly, the money interests that influence them — have a vested interest in our distraction.
After all, it is the primary force behind the consumption that drives economic expansion. Our distraction degrades our lives but inflates their profits. And makes it exceedingly difficult for us to band together and demand meaningful change.
Stepping off the hamster wheel of hyper-productivity now feels like a revolutionary act.
The source of my drive
Another critical aha was my realization that what drove my constant desire to get more done, to be “productive,” did not come from a healthy place.
On some level, I have long understood that my drive, my ambition, and my need to do is fueled by this deep-seated feeling within me that I am not enough.
And perhaps, if I reach some arbitrary level of accomplishment, that uncomfortable feeling within me will finally be sated.
But recently, I also learned there is another source driving my incessant action — my trauma response of flight. I always thought these responses only manifested in genuinely traumatic situations. Nope.
Trauma responses are simply our default reactions whenever life is uncomfortable. Which is often.
But reading Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, schooled me in these matters and helped me understand that for some of us (a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs in fact), our tendency to flee is manifested by our addiction to busyness.
You can’t be present or focused on difficult matters in your life if you’re always busy. Ugh.
And BOOM! 🤯 I started to look more closely at my productivity and its real purpose in my life.
When productivity misses the mark
Now, I must give a disclaimer. This is my story. Not yours, not everyone’s. You may realize that you’ve created a productivity system in your life that empowers you to reap the rewards you seek — the money, the impact, the meaning.
Productivity in and of itself is not bad.
But perhaps, for some of us, it focuses on the wrong things.
Once I began to examine my productivity systems and approach, I noticed a few trends.
Dopamine vs. Impact
When we are focused on the dopamine rush of checking off boxes on our to-do list rather than on making measurable progress on meaningful work, our “productivity” isn’t all that, well, productive. It’s easy to fall into the rhythm of doing, forgetting why we do the work in the first place.
It reminds me of an old I Love Lucy episode when Little Ricky takes up the drums. The rhythm is so captivating that as we watch Lucy begin cracking eggs she loses herself in his drumming and quickly has cracked an entire carton of eggs, wasting half a dozen of them.
Productivity to Fuel Productivity
I also realized that as I built productivity systems to be more efficient with my time, I wasn’t actually getting closer to my true goals. In fact, I was just doing more mindless tasks, busy work, or activities for other people. I wasn’t moving closer to MY dreams.
What was the freaking point?
In many ways, I was the embodiment of the hamster on the wheel, staying busy, but not building the kind of meaning and impact that I wanted.
Little made me more ineffectual than realizing I spent week after week in a blur of task completion and activity, but not making progress on my dreams. And I know I’m not alone in this.
Some day, we wake up and realize life has whizzed past us while we were too busy to notice, until it was too late.
How do I rebuild the bridge between impact and productivity?
It’s taken some time and I am still mastering the process, but there are two critical steps that are allowing me to begin to shift how I do what I do, so that it matters to me on a deeper level than momentary, fleeting satisfaction.
I have a clearer vision of what I want.
Perhaps the most helpful exercise I completed in this effort was to apply for a creator fellowship. It’s a long shot, but putting together a pitch of what I would build if someone gave me $100k and I could do anything with it, helped me gain clarity on MY vision.
Now I have a more thorough and holistic understanding of what I want, enabling me to evaluate tasks, projects, and opportunities through that lens.
If it doesn’t get me closer, I can say ‘no’ with a lot more ease.
Here are the questions they asked and which helped me gain this clarity:
What work have you done in the past that you’re proud of? Share links to your work if you have any.
Reviewing my work to select what instilled pride within me instantly sharpened my vision of what I care about and what I want more of in my life.What domains or problems are you most interested in? Why? What are unique insights you have about these spaces that others do not?
This question helped me realize that I am uniquely qualified to talk about and build the kind of vision I have for myself. I am not searching for a logical way to make money, but to create something to which I am deeply, personally, connected.What would you work on if you are accepted to the fellowship? (Max 2000 characters)
This is where it got interesting. And the character limit helped ensure I had a tight vision for myself.If selected, what will success look like once the fellowship period ends?
Now I know what I am trying to create. And it’s big, inspiring, and motiving AF.What might failure look like? What could be some of the original mistakes of your project? Do you hope to build off the work you explore during the fellowship?
Though it took me some time to realize it, eventually it dawned on me. The only way I fail is if I quit. And I won’t.
The end result was a vision far clearer than anything I have had for myself before.
I do less.
I am still learning this as it goes wholly against my nature, but I am saying no more and purposefully scheduling unproductive time into my day. Long walks, slow meals, and time to simply read.
I don’t think I could do this without gaining the clarity described above, but now that I have it, I can more thoughtfully decide when to push myself and when to give myself the grace to slow down, rest, and experience the small, joys of life.
A delicious meal with my partner. A night of laughter with friends. A long walk in a beautiful place. Planning an adventure in a foreign land.
I know we were taught that productivity can only create goodness and positive results in our lives, but what if they’re wrong and it’s only sending us in the wrong direction more efficiently?
Other articles I read while researching this topic:
When your doing is your undoing: toxic productivity — Psychology Today
Does maximizing impact lead to misery? — RadReads (my new favorite blog and newsletter)
Thanks as always for reading. I appreciate you more than I can say.
In Love and Growth,
Kasey