Previous: Chapter 17: Self-Trust
Productivity is hard.
To be productive is to create or preserve what is valuable and important, to achieve something significant in my life.
If I am to be productive, I must focus on my priorities, concentrate on high-value activities, channel my values and choices into achievable tasks and concrete actions, and be disciplined about my time and my life — for there is no self-direction without self-discipline.
When I create something of value, I close the gap between wish and fact, between the ideal and the real. By no means does this happen all at once; depending on what I want to achieve, it can take months, years, even decades to realize my goals, to make my values real in the world — with many setbacks and obstacles and challenges along the way. Patience and persistence are essential to my success.
Productivity is not a duty, but a desire for something higher and greater in my life: a matter of aspiration, passion, and energy applied to the great task of making my values real on this earth. At root, productivity is an expression of love, for to be a person who gets things done I must above all love the doing.
Next: Chapter 19: Collaboration