When I read this article by Cal Newport describing his readers’ growing discomfort with the language and culture of productivity, I resonated with their unease. For me, and apparently for many others, it has become difficult to disentangle the concept of productivity from its darker manifestations, like workaholism and greed.
I recently read Newport’s most well-known book, Deep Work, which explores and defends practices that cultivate focus, depth, and intention and contribute to greater productivity. I’m not a connoisseur of productivity books by any means, but I found Deep Work to be exceptionally interesting, persuasive, and practical. And yet, as I read, I couldn’t shake the feelings of discomfort described in the article.
Like one of those pictures that shows different images depending on the angle at which you look at it, the picture of work life that Newport painted shifted back and forth between a life of fulfillment and a life of misery. On one page, I would be inspired by the idea that I could work in a way that would increase my capacity for deep thinking and creativity and allow me to bring meaningful and valuable things into the world. On the next page, I would feel disillusioned by a vision of work that was motivated by ruthless competition against others and relentlessly high expectations for oneself.
It makes sense to me that a productive life would be attractive. In the beginning, humans were given work to do, a garden to tend, an earth to fill (presumably with more gardens, not strip malls or parking lots). And so I can’t dismiss the desire to be productive as purely mercenary, or as a result of the conditioning of my capitalistic society that I need to be liberated from. This desire is a desire to fulfill my purpose, to glorify God, to serve my neighbor, to live a good life.
And yet the image of a productive life as a good, fulfilling life keeps flickering out of focus. In my experience, it’s a short distance between feeling inspired and motivated to pursue a goal and feeling overwhelmed by the reminder of how much I have not yet achieved. Productivity is an elusive goal, a moving target, an endless series of false peaks. On a bad day, I have a hard time envisioning how chasing after it could lead to anything other than overworking, suffering from stress and anxiety, having difficulty resting, feeling that my best is never enough, constantly comparing myself to others, and eventually burning out.
Why is this such a common experience? If the desire to be purposefully productive is part of what makes us human, why does the process of trying to achieve that feel so dehumanizing? Is there any way to resolve the dissonance?
I have found help from two individuals who, at first glance, may seem unlikely to have much to say on the topic of productivity. First, I am grateful for the insights of the poet, essayist, novelist, and self-proclaimed mad farmer, Wendell Berry. If you’ve read much of Berry's work, you know that he has a deep, holistic, and biblical understanding of what it means to be human. Because of this understanding, he is able to recognize and describe the ways in which we have fallen short of our own humanity, and he insightfully diagnoses these problems in all areas of life—politics, education, healthcare, agriculture, and so on. I believe Berry’s diagnosis of our productivity problem would be this: We have exchanged an agrarian metaphor about what it means to be productive for an industrial one.
Berry has written extensively about how the shift from a primarily agricultural society to a primarily industrial one has changed the way that we think and, as a result, the way we live in the world. As our world has become increasingly mechanized, we have tended to think and live more like machines and less like human beings who are integrated with the rest of creation. Productivity is one example of this.
In an agrarian society, the words “produce” and “productive” would be associated with the realities of agrarian life—fertile fields, fruit-bearing trees, the harvest of a crop, the delivery of newborn livestock. These images would have, in turn, shaped people’s understanding of human productivity.
In the Bible, human prosperity, effectiveness, and influence are often described using agricultural metaphors, specifically the metaphor of a fruitful tree. In Genesis 1:28, God commands humans to “be fruitful and multiply.” Psalm 1 describes the blessed man as being “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” (v. 3). In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples that they can only bear fruit by abiding in him. Paul also uses the word “fruit” to describe the outworking of the Holy Spirit in our lives (Galatians 5). Throughout Scripture, it is clear that God intentionally designed humans to be productive like a tree is productive.
But that agricultural metaphor has been hijacked by an industrial one. Even though in our vocabulary, the association with agriculture remains—we talk about plants producing fruit and the produce section in the grocery store—our vision of productivity is no longer that of a fruitful tree but of the incessant output of factory machines. After all, our modern world is in many ways defined by the fact that we have machines that are many times more productive than humans (as long as we unquestioningly define productivity as output).
Slowly and unconsciously, our language has adapted to reflect these new mechanical standards of productivity. We describe prolific people as “cranking out” or “pumping out” whatever it is that they produce. We equate productivity with having “drive,” and I don’t think we’re imagining a farmer driving his cattle across a pasture. Most disturbing to me is the way we use “machine” as a compliment to describe ultra-productive people. No wonder some people describe feeling more like robots than human beings.
So what would it look like to reclaim an agricultural (and thus, a more biblical) vision of productivity, one aligned with what it means to be human? What would it look like—and feel like—to be productive like a tree?
To answer this question, we need the help of another person who is unlikely to ever be described as a productivity guru: a German forester named Peter Wohlleben. Wohlleben is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees, and he has a breathtaking depth of knowledge about—and love for—the mysterious living creatures we call trees. His book details the things that he has observed and learned from years of working in forests. Although to my knowledge he is not a Christian, and his book never mentions a Creator, his scientific insights read to me like spiritual parables. If we are intentionally designed by our Creator to be productive like trees, then the way our Creator designed trees has profound implications for how we ought to think about and pursue being productive.
Over the course of the next few essays, I plan to explore some of the lessons that I have learned from reading and reflecting on Wohlleben’s work. I’d love for you to join me in the exploration by sharing your own experiences, questions, and reflections.
For now, I’m curious: What images and metaphors do you most naturally associate with being productive? If industrial metaphors tend to dominate (as they usually do for me), does thinking in agrarian terms change your posture toward your schedule, goals, and to-do list in any way? If so, how? I’d love for you to leave a comment, email me, or let me know what you think next time we talk.
Check out the next post in this series here.