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How to release productivity guilt and embrace the hidden values in our daily lives.
Madeleine Dore has long felt a pressure to be productive. In the pursuit of getting things done, she tried every way to optimize her day, only to keep falling short and feeling behind. She turned to interviewing hundreds of creative thinkers and experts to find the secret to productivity. What she discovered instead was far more enriching: There is more to value in each day than what we did or didn't do.
I Didn't Do the Thing Today is a reprieve from our doing obsession. Designed as a companion for the days that go off track, the book's chapters explore the various ways we encounter productivity guilt-including comparison to others, striving for perfection, and our great expectations-to point to how a day doesn't have to be optimized, but simply occupied. When we take away judgment from how moments unfold, we can find our way out of the productivity spiral and step fully into our lives.
For anyone who has struggled with worrying about wasted time or felt caught in the busyness trap or stifled by indecision, I Didn't Do the Thing Today shares how to take productivity off its pedestal and find more connection, creativity, and curiosity in its place.
About the author
Madeleine Dore is a writer and interviewer exploring how we can broaden the definition of a day well spent. For the past five years, Dore has been asking creative thinkers how they navigate their days on her popular blog Extraordinary Routines and podcast Routines & Ruts. She regularly conducts life experiments and hosts events to examine how creativity isn’t just something we do, but how we approach our lives.
Summary
How to release productivity guilt and embrace the hidden values in our daily lives.
Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off, despite it being the most important thing. Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed.
After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn’t Do the Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal—by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life.
For anyone who has ever felt the pressure to do more, be more, achieve more, this antidote to our doing-obsession is the permission slip we all need to find our own way.
Additional text
"While many books insist on changing your life, this one invites you to expand your life. A radical masterpiece."
— Mari Andrew, author of My Inner Sky
'A remarkable combination: part broadside against our culture of frenetic busyness, part consolation for the days when things don't go to plan'
— Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
"I found a lot to steal here and you will, too."
— Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist
"Read it and sigh with relief"
— Hugh Mackay, author of The Kindness Revolution
“Deep, thoughtful, gently instructive, nourishing.”
—Clare Bowditch, author of Your Own Kind of Girl
