Ending the obsession with productivity

I am not a machine.

It’s a fact I’ve had to remind myself of repeatedly this year as I’ve tried to balance the many things on my calendar.

It’s also a mantra, one that’s especially useful as I sit with the cold, stale drone of the library at 1 a.m. and realize that, despite hours of genuine effort, my work is still not done.

I’ve been struck recently by an interest in artificial intelligence (AI)—specifically, whether AIs are more capable than people at solving the innumerable issues facing us as a society.

The algorithms that power AIs don’t need to sleep, take lunch breaks or call out sick. They react and create, react and create, ad infinitum, more efficient than any human ever could be. And if AIs are more capable than people, what does that mean for the next 70 or so years that I will be on this planet?

I know it sounds bleak. I’ve only recently begun to understand this preoccupation as part of a long-standing fear that what I am doing is never enough.

My overbooked schedule has left me feeling so exhausted and demoralized that I haven’t been able to focus on enjoying the interesting classes or final moments with my favorite people that should be defining my last semester of college.

I have been trying to perform the nonstop efficiency of a machine with a human brain susceptible to distraction, burnout and frustration.

We live in an age increasingly focused on numbers and productivity and, as with many societal ills, we can blame social media.

“Influencers” build entire careers bolstered by their Instagram or YouTube followings. LinkedIn, as useful as it may be, publicizes the number of “connections” a person has, a status symbol on a website otherwise dedicated to showcasing users’ professional experience and work samples.

The concept of “doing it for the résumé” is part of this productivity and quantity obsessed culture. It’s something that burdens a lot of us. And I know personally that there’s a unique burden placed on those of us who, in three short months, will trade our routines and our dependable circles of friends for a wider world.

Being in my last semester of college is uniquely terrifying in that I have no clearly defined “next.” Of all the possible paths I could take after I cross the commencement stage in May, I’ve considered the following: going to grad school; teaching English abroad; applying for full-time jobs in the communications field; moving across the country and winging it; moving to another country and winging it; or doing a year of service. I’ll let you know when I’ve narrowed it down.

And it is so easy to feel defeated by these things—by the rigmarole of the job application process or the mandated hoop-jumping of getting into grad school. I’ve found it helpful to remind myself that, sometimes, part of being an adult is accepting things as they are and learning to live with them.

I look back on idealist attitudes I had when I was younger and am grateful for the healthy level of jadedness that settled in around the time I turned 20. Becoming an adult citizen of our flawed, backwards world full of potential is not so much about accepting defeat as learning to pick our battles.

When it comes to growing up, I’m glad I’m not a robot. I like being able to decide how I’m going to change myself and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with personal growth; doing things like paring down my schedule because I’ve learned what I can and can’t handle.

I wish I could end this piece with a reassurance that we won’t all be replaced by AIs someday. Unfortunately, I can make no such promises.

But I can end with something a mentor told me over coffee in December. We’d been talking about how the Internet is continuing to expand opportunities for writers in ways we don’t fully understand yet, and I mentioned that I was afraid human writing abilities would be made obsolete by artificial intelligence within the next 20 or 30 years of my life.

“Do you know what an algorithm auditor is?” she asked. I said no.

“It’s someone who screens algorithms professionally to make sure they’re not prejudiced.”

Algorithms can do a lot, but they don’t understand people well enough to know the worst of us, the ways we dehumanize and deny opportunity to entire groups. Technology is unfortunately making that easier.

But technology can’t keep itself in check. Only people can do that.