The Productivity Trap: A Software Engineer’s Perspective

Made by AI (honestly)

In our race to be ever more productive, we may be losing something essential: the time and space to think, wonder, and innovate.

The Productivity Obsession

We live in a world that seems obsessed with productivity these days. If you go onto any social media you see tips and tricks about how to be more productive and achieve more in one day than you ever thought possible.

There is long form content, short form content, books, videos, podcasts, blogs, shows, talks. You name it, there will be someone out there making that kind of content and seemingly experiencing a wonderfully productive existence.

But why do we want to be productive? When did this obsession with productivity at the individual level begin? Why are we so convinced that doing more and more in a shorter and shorter amount of time is the way forward?

My Experience as a Software Engineer

I jumped onto the productivity bandwagon with as much enthusiasm as the next person. I found out about time management, Pomodoros, the two-minute rule, task batching, 80/20 rule, ‘Eat the frog’ technique and this was all before generative AI came along and enabled me to do so much more.