I Didn't Do The Thing Today: On letting go of productivity guilt

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Madeleine Dore has done us a huge favour in reframing age-old wisdom and setting it in a very contemporary context. Read it and sigh with relief.” After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn't Do The Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal—by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life. A remarkable combination: part broadside against our culture of frenetic busyness, part consolation for the days when things don’t go to plan, it’s also the best kind of productivity manual, filled with guidance for actually getting around to more of the things that matter.”

Maybe we need to stop letting ambition get in our way. Sometimes ambition can be a good thing, but sometimes it can be a pursuit of recognition from others, rather than a focus on doing things that we want to do. It’s obviously not all bad, but maybe being more micro-ambitious, a term that she took from the wonderful Tim Minchin, is a healthier and more flexible approach that allows us to focus in what’s in front of us, in the present instead of what’s next. In our pursuit of improvement, we are often told that if we could just be more consistent, more disciplined, more productive, we could be better. But a perfectly optimised routine is rarely the grand solution it promises to be, precisely because it is so often aspirational. We can’t expect to re-create the same recipe when we don’t have the same ingredients. Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There's the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don't want to do, and the thing we've been putting off, despite it being the most important thing. Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed.

For anyone who has ever felt the pressure to do more, be more, achieve more, this antidote to our doing-obsession is the permission slip we all need to find our own way.

Kindness, Madeleine says, is the antidote to burnout. Kindness with ourselves and with others. Whether that’s a chat with the person serving you at the post office, or making a donation to charity, or texting a friend to say hi, incorporating a bit more kindness into our days, rather than busy-ness, can be a nice way of slowing down and remembering what’s important. i loved this book and think anyone would get some kind of wisdom out of it. i'm a hugely productive person, well-read and also a curious learner. it's the book i wish i wrote myself and yet i'm glad dore has already put this out into the world. and what an inviting and gorgeous cover! Now, we can’t seek constant novelty in life, but we can be much more attuned to it and leave space for surprise, even if it’s just for an hour or 10 minutes in our day. Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, the thing we’ve been putting off (despite it being the most important thing). Even on days where we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed.

Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

An important case for worrying less about getting things done and more about the things that are worth doing. I found a lot to steal here and you will, too.” PDF / EPUB File Name: I_Didnt_Do_The_Thing_Today_-_Madeleine_Dore.pdf, I_Didnt_Do_The_Thing_Today_-_Madeleine_Dore.epub She has contributed columns and features to Sunday Life, BBC WorkLife, ArtsHub, 99u, Womankind, Kill Your Darlings, The Design Files, ABC Life and more. Madeleine regularly conducts life experiments and hosts events to explore how creativity isn’t just something we do, but how we approach our lives.

Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There's the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don't want to do, the thing we've been putting off (despite it being the most important thing). Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious or disappointed. It means letting go of expectations, or at least holding them much more lightly and letting things surprise us, which can then allow us to explore what we really want, not just what we think we “should” be doing. Kindness extends to ourselves by knowing that rest is not a bad thing. Hobbies don’t need to be a side-hustles, and we can challenge all the things we tell ourselves that we should do. Otherwise it’s easy to find ourselves too busy to actually enjoy life. There’s a really nice analogy in the book of being like a sponge. Sometimes we’re in absorption mode soaking up, resting, learning, taking in knowledge etc, but too long in absorb mode will leave us kind of sodden and a bit soggy and wet. So we need to be squeezed. We need a bit of pressure to balance us out. After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn’t Do The Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal — by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life. After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn't one. Instead, we're being set up to fail. I Didn't Do the Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal--by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life.

Being a day artist might mean making changes to your environment, having a corner of a room dedicated to reading, for example. It doesn’t need to be that you need lots of extra space, but maybe you just use your space differently. There’s example in the book from Austin Kleon, who talks about having a really clear, crisp, clean work area with his computer where he writes, but then a really messy desk, which is where he does all his messy collage work. Jenny Kee says she needs to live without a routine, to account for the variances in her health. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian A remarkable combination: part broadside against our culture of frenetic busyness, part consolation for the days when things don't go to plan' Wobbling is a constant adjustment, we’re constantly twisting and turning and balancing and bumping into things. But berating ourselves for our inconsistency takes up the precious time that we’re telling ourselves off for wasting in the first place. There is no dress rehearsal in life, this is it. Not only do our days vary; we vary within them. We all get 24 hours, but they are not available for each of us in the same way: we may work nine-to-five, care for young children, pile one gig upon another, have a longer commute, or have the flexibility of freelancing.