You are not a machine (stop pretending like you are)

We hold ourselves to a higher productivity standard than machines. 

When we get tired, or emotionally exhausted, or lose focus, or when we can’t find any motivation, the tendency for ambitious people like us is to be hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves for not being totally locked-in, and for missing opportunities. 

Meanwhile, we expect the cars we drive to fail. We expect them to need periodic maintenance. We insure them for crashes, and take them into the shop for oil changes, and new tires, and tune-ups. But when our bodies fail—when our minds falter—we get so surprised and discouraged, even though we aren’t machines. We’re organisms. 

The fallibility of human psychology is documented a thousand different ways. Virtually every productivity tip and tool is based around the notion that we aren’t machines, and that we need to optimize for that fact.

When we lose focus, that’s a symptom of a greater issue. Have you changed your mental oil recently? Are you pushing too hard uphill? Are your emotional tires feeling road-worn? Is your motivational transmission having trouble shifting gears? Have you taken any time at all to tend to these things? Have spent any money to get them sorted out?

Some crashes in life are out of our control. We get read-ended at a stoplight. People get sick. Break-ups happen. Relatives pass away unexpectedly. Just as you wouldn’t expect a car to run perfectly after a crash, we can’t hold ourselves to a machine’s standard during a time of turmoil. 

Understand this: you are not a machine. You require even more care than cars do. Stop holding yourself to an impossibly high productivity standard.