An Akhirah Paradigm vs. Worldly Paradigm for Productivity and Time Management

There will always be a gap between what we want to do and what we actually can do. 

How you address that gap depends on your mindset or worldview. Are you approaching this gap from a worldly perspective, or an akhirah perspective? Are you more influenced by the ideas of hustle culture or barakah culture? 

Traditional productivity advice (obviously secular in perspective) focuses on maximizing every moment. It shows us how to work smarter and harder. The culture around us reinforces these ideas by giving us the locus of control over the outcomes we wish to achieve - if you dream big enough, or work hard enough, you can achieve anything. If you don’t achieve it, go back and find a way to work harder. 

And to a large degree, much of the productivity advice out there will help you learn how to work more efficiently, maximize your time, and so on. What it fails to account for, however, is the finitude of life. Instead of recognizing that there will always be too much to do, productivity advice sells a false hope that somehow we will get an impossible amount done. 

Oliver Burkeman, the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, writes: 

There arises an inevitable and unbridgeable gap between what you’d ideally like to do and what you actually can do. … premodern people weren’t much troubled by such thoughts, partly because they believed in an afterlife: there was no particular pressure to ‘get the most out of’ their limited time, because as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t limited, and in any case, earthly life was but a relatively insignificant prelude to the most important part.  …. Secular modernity changes all that. When people stop believing in an afterlife, everything depends on making the most of this life.

Trying to make the most of this life creates a sense of undue pressure. Every moment we live must productively serve some type of future goal. This may not sound problematic at first glance, but it is a great source of anxiety. We are made to feel that we must constantly be taking action to achieve our goals. Not doing so is made to feel like a waste of time. 

We make sacrifices that are meant to help us get ahead. We cut back on family engagements, we no longer have time to hang out with friends, we forego any and all entertainment in the name of being productive. We tell ourselves we are focused on meaningful goals that require sacrifice and dedication. 

Days where we aren’t able to follow our perfect morning routine can feel like failures before we’ve even had breakfast. Taking your foot off the gas or relaxing in any way can create a sense of failure and impending doom - not working hard enough to achieve the things we want. 

The sacrifice and hustle is meant to give us purpose and direction. It is a way to ‘put a dent in the universe’ as per the ethos of Silicon Valley. 

Burkeman notes:

The hazard in any such discussion of ‘what matters most’ in life though, is that it tends to give rise to a kind of paralyzing grandiosity. It starts to feel as though it’s your duty to find something truly consequential to do with your time - to quit your office job to become an aid worker or start a space flight company - or else, if you’re in no position to make such a grand gesture, to conclude that a deeply meaningful life isn’t an option for you. On the level of politics and social change, it becomes tempting to conclude that only the most revolutionary, world-transforming causes are worth fighting for - that it would be meaningless to spend your time, say, caring for an elderly relative with dementia or volunteering at the local community garden while the problems of global warming and income inequality remain unsolved. Among New Age types, this same grandiosity takes the form of the belief that each of us has some cosmically significant Life Purpose, which the universe is longing for us to uncover and then to fulfill. ….

 But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been ‘well spent,’ your life needs to involve deeply impressive accomplishments, or that it should have a lasting impact on future generations - or … ‘transcend the common and the mundane.’ … If your life as significant in the scheme of things as you tend to believe, how could you not feel obliged to do something truly remarkable with it?”

It is worth noting that the grandiosity Burkeman mentions has permeated its way into the way we speak about religion as well. We start to devalue things that may otherwise bring us benefit. It’s no longer worth volunteering to help a handful of people, we need to find a way to instead make it scale. We don’t care how good a class is, if it’s not attracting a significantly large enough audience, it is perceived as a waste of time. 

Stepping back, it’s worth asking who exactly defines what a meaningful purpose is? Is that purpose driven by religion and faith, or consumerism? 

While it may seem rational to assume that setting huge goals, sacrificing, and working relentlessly to get there is a recipe for success - it is actually a recipe for impatience. We get finicky when work is not translating into results, or the roadmap to success becomes muddied. We get filled with dread and anxiety when it feels like we’ve put forth so much effort only to not see the finish line. We sacrifice important events with friends and family, telling ourselves it will be worth it in the end. But every time a new obstacle presents itself, it reignites feelings of doubt - feelings which we numb by doubling down and working harder and sacrificing even more. 

The truth is, when we look at things from an akhirah perspective, we are forced to tame the delusions of our ego. We embrace the unremarkable. We seek meaning and purpose from our faith and work backwards from there. 

We learn patience. We learn to keep chipping away at something daily, and disconnecting ourselves from the anxiety of the outcome. This idea is encapsulated perfectly in the hadith, “Even if the Resurrection were established upon one of you while he has in his hand a sapling, let him plant it.”

One of the main tension points between an akhirah and worldly perspective is the idea of barakah (blessing). When we look at the things that bring barakah into our lives - many of them are quite unproductive from a worldly perspective. 

Our schedules are not oriented around the ideal morning routine and maximizing productive hours. They are oriented around the rhythms of worship and community. Five daily prayers, even in the middle of the workday. Weekly attendance to Friday prayer. Accepting the invitation to the wedding, and celebrating in the important events in the lives of others. We’re taught to prioritize time with family, and to put forth effort into building friendships via the bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood. 

None of these activities would be considered useful in pursuit of a world-changing worldly goal. They do, however, give us a sense of purpose and priority that helps us build for the akhirah. 

As the saying goes, everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to help their mom with the dishes.