Productivity is not a fruit of the Spirit

I recently returned from two weeks of annual leave. It was like a circuit breaker – a much-needed interruption in a life that had become an endless stream of to-do lists and being ‘always-on’. 

“I don’t know how you do it all,” people often say to me. And the truth is, I don’t. My brain is constantly filled with all the tasks I haven’t done. Despite getting up at 5am each day, I recently met someone who gets up at 3am – and briefly considered whether that might be the solution to my problems. 

Then I realised I needed to get a grip. 

Everyone I know is busy and exhausted. And as AI tools become increasingly commonplace at work, I fear they give us the false perception that we are creating space for ourselves – when all we are doing is creating more space to fill with more things. 

I have tried many different productivity methods in my working life: the Getting Things Done (GTD) method, the Bullet Journalling system, the Pomodoro technique, task triaging on an urgent-important matrix. Each time I start these new methods, I think: This is the one that will change my life. 

The Church should be better at this than the secular world. But we, too, are succumbing to the hustle culture that drives people to see their value in their productivity. And it’s not good for us. Studies of US pastors show that 75 per cent report being extremely or highly stressed, 90 per cent work 55-75 hours a week, and 90 per cent feel fatigued and worn out.

Deep down, we know we cannot do it all

All of this makes for a frantic, rather than peace-filled life. As John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Hodder & Stoughton): “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” Because hurry, busyness and productivity are not fruits of the Spirit. We were made for more. 

In Theos’ recent report More: The problem with productivity, we interviewed Sister Catherine, who spent part of her career in finance and the third sector before becoming a nun. She said that rather than thinking in terms of productivity, we should think in terms of fruitfulness. 

“Clearing your inbox is productive but isn’t necessarily fruitful,” she says. “Fruitfulness is something generative, not just productive or accumulative. Productivity relies on a narrow understanding of the human person and an anxiety about tangible results, which doesn’t allow for the generative.”

Secular thinkers are waking up to truths that the Christian tradition has long championed. As the poet Tricia Hersey writes: “Rest is resistance.” Drawing on biblical ideas of Sabbath, her Nap Ministry is a direct challenge to capitalist systems that treat people as machines and trap so many of us in this constant loop of doing rather than being. 

Deep down, we know we cannot do it all. Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks (Vintage) is named after the number of weeks in the average lifetime. In it, Burkeman reminds us that “the day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control”. This echoes an ancient biblical truth: we are finite beings, invited not into endless productivity but into rhythm, rest and reliance on God.

As a new term begins, and I am pulled again towards finding my worth in busyness, may I be reminded of God’s grace and exhale in the freedom of that.