Angering the Productivity Gurus

a case for intentional inefficiency and slowing down

Photo by Mitchell Henderson

I remember texting for the first time in high school, sitting on the couch with a Motorola flip phone someone had passed down to me. It felt exciting to communicate instantly with friends through an always accessible device, but the thrill didn’t last long. Texting became a meaningful way to communicate but also created a compulsion to stay connected and respond immediately.

Then came MySpace, Facebook, and smartphones. And today, it’s AI. Like texting and social media before it, AI promises possibility — a tool that can support work, simplify tasks, and even spark creativity. I see its potential.

But I’m also cautious, especially as a late millennial who has lived through these rapid advancements and changes in how we do life together. Technology promises progress but also leaves us unprepared for its consequences. If texting taught us to crave immediacy and social media trained us to fear missing out, AI seems positioned to teach us to streamline and systematize every last part of our lives, even the parts that come alive with inefficiency.

What happens when we trade unhurried moments for a never-ending quest towards optimization? What happens when we try to fill every empty moment with something “productive”?

Growing up, I spent hours wandering farm fields with friends, catching frogs in the pond down the road, and exploring the vastness of frozen lakes. Sometimes we would sit on top of the stacked hay in their barn and talk for hours, or dare each other to touch the trees on the other side of the lake like it was somehow forbidden and frightening. And all the while, no phones buzzed with updates, no notifications drew our attention. The only expectation was to be home before dark. Life was full and creative — not optimized, not automated, but deeply and wonderfully alive.

These memories stand in stark contrast to the reality of today; the freedom of those moments feels worlds away from the pull of today’s platforms. For example, last week, I caught myself responding to a Slack thread first thing in the morning instead of my usual routine to get oriented for work. I noticed my reactivity to something that deserved more time, deleted the reply, and came back to it a few hours later, with more information and clarity. What I wrote then was so much more thought-through and helpful. It was a simple reminder: not everything needs to be addressed right away.

Truly, most things in life aren’t emergencies. Most things benefit from a pause, a breath, a little extra time. But notifications, algorithms, and our own habits with tech conspire to keep us on the hook, in a continual loop of updates and reactivity.

What are we missing by being so perpetually available and accessible? And what do we gain by stepping away?

I don’t just mean letting go for a few hours. I mean rethinking how we engage altogether — not jumping at every sound, photographing every experience, or expecting immediate responses from others or giving them ourselves.

How can we consciously do something different? Tech and how we communicate and connect will continue to evolve faster than we are capable of learning how to engage with in healthy, life-giving ways.

But being mindful, reshaping our daily lives to embrace slow moments, and sometimes choosing the meandering path over the quickness of tech can help. Maybe we’ll even learn to use AI to free up more time for play and problem-solving on our own.

For me, this means starting all of my writing by hand before bringing it to the computer. It means sitting with a cup of coffee or tea in the morning and just being for a little while. It means trying to do simple math in my head sometimes.

It also means taking an approach to a trip in a few months that I’ve not employed before. We have a place to stay and a general framework, but (as someone who hates the sun and rarely drinks) my version of relaxing on a beach with a book and margarita might be sitting in a Parisian cafe with a steaming café crème, freshly baked croissants, and a notebook ready for creativity. We’ve got so much spaciousness built into this trip for just exploring neighborhoods, taking unplanned day-trips, and enjoying being in a diverse city. This trip will not be efficient in our use of time, transportation, or sight-seeing, and I’m so excited to just see what happens.

This deliberate inefficiency even has its place in work. Having a long lunch with coworkers once in a while, or learning to laugh at at a small mistake can go further than we might expect.

In this current era of tech and connectivity and beyond, I want to stay curious but grounded, open but intentional. I absolutely will not be “optimizing” my life.

I refuse to lose the satisfaction of working through a problem thoughtfully or the joy of chasing curiosity down a wild path. Some of life’s richest moments are born from inefficiency.

So, what if we angered the productivity gurus and lived a little less efficiently? What if we wandered all day through a field without checking the time, stayed on the lake long enough to feel the chill in our bones?

Maybe the most “optimal” way to live isn’t seamless productivity but intentional inefficiency — where detours lead to unexpected magic, and life comes most alive.

Even as AI and tech advance, I’ll keep choosing curiosity over speed and presence over perfection, trusting that the most meaningful moments are found when we slow down, wander, and truly see. Life doesn’t need to be optimized to be full — it just needs space to unfold.