Episode 48: Productivity
Released March 29th, 2022
We’re always worried about being productive enough with our time, but where does this compulsion come from? In episode 48, Ellie and David examine productivity culture and the drive to produce. Although research says longer hours don’t equal more productivity, capitalism encourages us to always be working, even at the cost of our mental and physical health. How does this inefficient approach to work (and our lives outside of it) stifle our growth and creativity? According to Twitter memes and Bifo, refusing productivity for lazy relaxation on the beach may be a revolutionary rejection of productivity culture, but Adorno contends that laziness recycles us into merely consuming commodities for capitalism instead of producing them. What can a creative, process-based approach offer us that a productivist one cannot, and what value might there be in just producing less?
Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here:
Amelia Horgan, “The ‘Dark Academia’ Subculture Offers a Fantasy Alternative to the Neoliberal University”
John Pencavel, “The Productivity of Working Hours”
Shainaz Firfiray, “Long hours at the office could be killing you – the case for a shorter working week”
Economic Policy Institute, “The Productivity-Pay Gap”
Foucault, History of Madness
Franco Berardi, Futurability
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Cal Newport, “It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity”
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
