Optimize your hustle
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/26/21154514/hustle-culture-optimization-new-york-times-productivity-video-schlossberg
Reported today in The Verge.
Optimize your hustle
The venerable New York Times does its fair share of trolling these days, and because the paper of record is The Paper of Record, it is quite amusing to see people up in arms about its latest diversion. (Looking specifically at you, Styles and Opinion. Well done.) A friend posted the latest in a Slack I frequent: a video titled "Don't Just Live Your Life, Optimize It." It was a funny, beautifully animated argument against the productivity fetish disguised as a piece of productivity messaging. It was an attack or, at least, a shot across the bow.
The video, created by Tala Schlossberg, describes steps to get rid of the downtime left in your life - "minimize friction, maximize hustle"; "iterate"; "accelerate"; and "eventually you die" - but the real victory is the tone of the narration, which strikes a nice balance between enthusiasm and cynicism. Yes, there is a jape about polyphasic sleep.
Productivity, strictly defined, is the state of being productive - the time it takes to make stuff. In macroeconomics, it's the thing that makes the economy grow without having to add jobs, and it's defined as gross domestic product (GDP) divided by total hours worked. Or to put it differently, it's a measure of the ratio of value added to a system versus the labor put into in the first place. Schlossberg's video references one of economist John Maynard Keynes' more famous essays, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," which was published in 1930 and is credited with popularizing the theory that technological advancement would lead to more productivity and, crucially, less labor for workers. (It's where the idea of a three-hour workday / 15-hour workweek comes from.)
But Keynes' vision was far grander than that: he beli