Productivity foundations: understand before you optimize
Productivity is often presented as a race: speed, tools, and miracle methods.
But trying to go faster without understanding why you're running is the fastest way to burn out.
In the productivity guide, foundations are the essential starting point. Before talking about organization, focus, or optimization, you need to clarify what productivity really is, what it is for, and what it should improve in our lives.
This chapter sets the conceptual frame. It helps you step back from our relationship with work, time, consumption, and performance, so you don't apply productivity methods in the wrong direction.
The goal is not to work more and more. It's to understand how to work better, and above all: why.
Why do we keep working more and more
We live in a society where machines have never been more capable, and yet the feeling of not having enough time is everywhere.
Why do we keep working more and more, when technical progress was supposed to free us from work?
-> The progress paradox: why we keep working more
This page lays the historical and economic groundwork, and helps you understand why digital tools did not automatically improve our relationship with work.
What productivity is really for
Before trying to be more productive, you need to know what that means.
Productivity is not about filling your days. It's about doing what helps you reach your personal, professional, and life goals.
This reflection is essential if you want to avoid confusing busyness with effectiveness, and avoid turning productivity into extra pressure on yourself.
Slow down to speed up
Changing how you work often feels like you're losing time at first.
That's normal. Any lasting improvement follows a pattern: unlearning, then relearning, and only then real gains.
-> Happy are the lazy: invest time to save it
This page explains why slowing down temporarily is expected, and why quitting too early is the most common mistake.
The three levers of productivity
Productivity is not a single factor. It's the balance between three complementary dimensions.
Organize your work so you know what to do, focus so you can give it your attention, then speed up so you can execute efficiently.
-> Organization x Focus x Speed: the productivity equation
This framework explains why optimizing only speed or tools is rarely enough, and often counterproductive.
Work less by changing your relationship with time
Working less does not only mean reducing your hours.
It also means changing how time is lived, perceived, and felt at work.
-> Always have fun: enjoy your work so it feels like less work
This approach introduces the idea of subjective time, and shows how enjoyment, flow, and meaning can transform your experience of work.
Stop the endless "more"
The productivity gains we've accumulated over two centuries could already allow us to work far less.
If that's not the case, it's largely because, collectively, we chose to consume more rather than work less.
-> In praise of enough: why you should stop wanting to work more and more
This page questions the link between consumption, work, career, and life choices, and offers a deeper look at what "enough" really means for a fulfilling life.
How to use this chapter
You can read these pages in order to build a global understanding of productivity, or come back to them whenever you want to question your relationship with work and time.
This chapter does not give you concrete methods yet. It prepares the ground.
Once these foundations are in place, the chapters on organization, focus, and execution make a lot more sense.