My team has a daily check-in on Slack. It’s meant to serve as a quick touch-base, highlighting progress and roadblocks across various projects. The intention is to improve communication and collaboration across functions.

But because I’m a human being, I often turn it into an “I swear I’m working hard today” list of tasks to prove I’m doing my job and am a worthy investment.

I fight the need to type out a laundry list of tasks for the day. There have been times I’ve actually considered creating more work for myself because my to-do list seemed “too short” to me; or, I squeeze in as many to-dos as possible regardless of how much time they might take. Because if I have to be working for eight hours a day, I need to have more than just a task or two to show for it.

The Power of One Task

My family makes fun of me for being really bad at measuring stuff. Like, I have a laughable history of buying incorrectly-sized frames, envelopes, fabric, and even trash bags (apparently 8 gallons is not that much when it comes to garbage capacity).

Before I started driving, I thought 1 mile equaled 1 minute. So, in my mind, if something was 45 miles away, it would take approximately 45 minutes to get there.

Things I didn’t take into account: car speed, weather, traffic...

I realized I apply a similar logic to my task list.

I stack tasks on my list as if they will each take a minute to complete. Having a task list of three feels like a joke. But the reality is, one task could potentially take me a few hours, or half a day, to do. Also… breaks, meetings, lunch, normal distractions all exist.

I know crossing off 8-10 tasks can feel like a much bigger accomplishment than one, two, or three — or even half a task. But, is it really?

Productivity doesn’t have to be measured by how many tasks you get done in a day.

It’s Giving Less

If you only had the capacity to finish one task today, what would it be?

‘Quality over quantity’ is a concept that sounds good but can feel bad in practice. Capitalism is built on more. And productivity as most of us know it is built on capitalism.

The more you do, the more productive you are. The more productive you are, the more successful you seem. It’s an exhausting cycle. It’s also not always true.

Let what you’re able to give be enough.