The Law Of Productivity

This universe has many mystical laws that govern it. One of those laws is what I call the Law Of Productivity.

My experience has led me to believe there is a rule in the universe that people have to spend most of their time on their purpose or being productive. We have to focus more on these priorities than on social interactions or partying, as our time is not meant to be spent sitting around idly doing nothing or socializing.

The Law Of Productivity is that humans are designed to be productive. This is what makes us happiest. We’re not meant to waste our time chasing people, partying, or resting too much. We can rest every now and again to recover after working hard. But we’re not meant to spend most of our time doing this. There are four main benefits to this.

Benefit One: Society Improves

This Law exists because it causes society to move forward. People who follow this rule will contribute more to society.

Big changes and discoveries are made because of this. Scientific inventions that improve society, like cars, technology, medicine, etc; came about because there were people who followed the Law of Productivity and were hard-working. If not for them, we would probably still be stuck in the Stone Age, or might have died out from disease without any medicinal cure. We also would not have the same level of comfort we enjoy today that is provided by technology and other such innovations.

People will also contribute to society in small ways. People who dedicate themselves to working in their jobs help society. Our society needs all the people who are plumbers, engineers, accountants, doctors, entertainers, teachers, etc. Society would fall apart if not for them. Those who start businesses will provide employment for their workers, and provide valuable services and products that their customers need.

There are also other ways to follow the Law Of Productivity. Someone who is doing volunteer work will contribute to society by helping others who need it. Someone who makes music, acts, paints, writes, etc; will contribute to society by entertaining others and making them happier. This entertainment will give others the mental rest and strength they need to keep on working, or deal with depressing problems they face.

A person might follow the Law of Productivity and work hard for several years but not see any results. That is okay. The person working hard and trying, is not wasting his time by doing this. He is developing his skills, he is learning lessons, improving his discipline, and setting himself up to be in a better position to contribute to society in the future, whether that is 10 years from now or later. It is important for him not to give up.

Benefit Two: Helps Someone Find Their Purpose

Sometimes someone picks the wrong path, and dedicates several years studying something which was not right for him. He might feel bad for thinking that he spent several years on this, but it was not a waste. He needed to know what was not meant for him and eliminate the false choices. And the only way to do so is by actually trying something. He would not be closer to figuring out what the right path is for him if he had not spent time on the wrong path. There are no mistakes, only lessons. And once he figures out what the right path is, he can dedicate himself to it, and study or do something which allows him to follow this path and contribute to society.

Studying the wrong thing is never a complete waste. Some people might spend 3 years studying a degree they never use. But if they dedicate themselves to it, they will develop discipline which they can carry with them to the next chapter of their journey.

Trying and failing is never a bad thing. It’s better than the alternative of not trying and failing automatically, but without learning any of the lessons that trying and failing gives you.

Someone might dedicate a few years to try to create something like a computer software, but fail. This is not a waste. Even though he might not have contributed to society, he has knocked out one of the false paths in his journey. It was productive. He is now closer to figuring out what will actually work in his journey and that he will be able to contribute to society with. Maybe he will take the lessons he learnt from this to try and create another computer program, or he will realize that creating computer programs is not for him and he has eliminated one false road in his life, and he will try something else.

The Law Of Productivity does not require one to be successful, it only requires one to keep working and being productive. As long as someone keeps trying and trying, something will eventually happen. The Law Of Productivity is not about obsessing about the results. It’s about focusing on the process, it’s about being productive, not successful. And ironically, this is the best way to achieve success.

Benefit Three: Become More Spiritual

Making being productive the aim of one’s life, results becoming less attached to people, which is good spiritually.

In Hinduism, Buddhism, and a lot of other religions, the importance of not being attached to people is emphasized. Certain spiritual traditions and texts on Near-Death Experience talks about how if we are attached to people or objects in this world, when we die, it will be harder for our soul to move on to the next phase of our spiritual journey. If we are attached to people and objects in this world, our soul will remain trapped in this physical world. This will not happen if we become attached to being productive and get our meaning in life from that.

Benefit Four: Better Emotions

From an emotional perspective, the Law gives more happiness. There is a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of joy from spending the day working hard. Studies have shown that people who do nothing for months often go into depression, and complain about feeling aimless in their life.

I also believe if someone dedicates themselves to being productive and judge themselves by how productive they are, then they will be less dependent on people for happiness. Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of not to attach your happiness to people or objects, but to attach it to a goal. The achievement of the goal is not what matters, but the process of chasing it.

People who follow the Law of Productivity are often concerned with the question of “How can I spend my limited time on earth productively to achieve the most possible?”, or “How can I spend my time so I have something to show for my life?” They are not always concerned with money. Often their aim can be to work as much as they can, or create something like art, music, books, etc. Or to help as many people as possible. All these are productive ways to spend one’s time.

APPLYING THE LAW OF PRODUCTIVITY TO ONE’S SOCIAL LIFE

As stated before, when one dedicates oneself to this law, and applies it to one’s life, one will invest as much time as possible to working and being productive. While resting and recovering is important, wasting time on useless pursuits is not. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Hence, one will cut down one’s social life and spend as little time as possible partying and meeting people.

This is not an extreme measure. There are plenty of motivational speakers like Gary Vaynerchuk, who advice others to cut back on partying on a Friday and Saturday night and to spend that time working on their dream instead.

For example, most of the students who score high grades in university often don’t go out much as they are focused on their studies. One of the highest scoring students in my university class once told me “You can either have a great social life going out to a lot of parties every week, or you can have high grades. But you can’t have both.” He was right, and he achieved marks so high that he went on to study a PhD!

It’s okay to socialize every now and again to relax after working really hard. But it should be a reward, not the primary purpose of one’s existence. Socializing should not be something which takes up too much of one’s time.

I have something I call the 90/10 rule which I follow. And that is that I will not spend more than 10% of my time socializing. Often times this might be less, like only 5% of my time. The other 90% or more of my time is dedicated to work, hobbies, exercising, household chores, etc. This rule prevents me from losing focus on what is important in favor of something like my social life.

Because I don’t want to waste too much time socializing, I have two other rules that I follow:

Maximum 15 Friends

I aim to not have more than 15 friends. This in itself is actually a lot, as according to surveys the average adult only has 2 to 8 friends. So in the future I might reduce the number of friends I have from 15 to even less. Some of my really productive friends don’t have more than 5 friends. They may have a lot of acquaintances that they see once or twice a year, but they only have a few friends that they see regularly. They don’t waste much time on their social life, and this allows them to be hyper-focused, really productive, and achieve a lot.

I have been really popular before. I had a phase in my life where I had plenty of friends, having 50 friends turn up to my 26th birthday party. But I realized this did not make me happy.

I was spending a lot of time on my social life, but not doing much else. I felt empty on the inside. I didn’t realize it then, but the reason for this was because I was not being productive with my time. We humans are designed to be happiest when we are working on something and spending our time productively. Not by wasting our time partying or chasing popularity. Unfortunately, back then I had nobody to tell me that happiness doesn’t come from spending a lot of time socializing, but it comes from working on something and improving yourself.

Don’t Waste Time When Meeting New People

One has to limit the time spent on one’s social life to have more time to dedicate to their work or passion. In order to do so, there has to be an intelligent system in place to maximize the amount of connections made with the limited time one spends socializing.

Just walking up to random strangers on the street or in bars and nightclubs and hoping you will form a connection is not time efficient. A lot of them are not interested in meeting new people. Plenty of people go to bars and clubs to spend time with their existing friends. And people in the streets are busy grocery shopping and running errands and don’t want to be disturbed.

You also do not share anything in common, and you do not know how compatible you are with them. You might have to talk to 100 strangers before you find one person you are compatible with.

Most of you reading this already know that approaching strangers and trying to build a friendship with them is not smart and efficient. But there are a few people who recommend this and mistakenly believe it is a good strategy. For those misguided people, I have to clarify here that trying to build a friendship by talking to random strangers is one of the least efficient ways. Most people would agree this is pointless, and waste a lot of time for little to no results.

The best way to improve your social life with the least possible time investment is to go to events or meet-up groups where people who share the same hobbies and interests as you will be.

This fits into the Law Of Productivity in two ways:

Firstly, there is the obvious point of saving a lot of time as you are meeting people who are interested in meeting others, and who share things in common with you. So it will be easier to make friends with someone who is compatible with you there by investing a lot less time.

Secondly, you are also being productive. If you like volleyball and you join a volleyball team or meet-up, you are being productive by exercising. Exercise helps your health, attention, and ability to work better. And as a bonus, you get to meet people.

If you are a writer or a painter, and you go to a class or meet-up group for this, then you not only spend time doing something productive, but as a bonus you meet people.

If you want to learn about a language, culture, or something else, and you join a class or meet-up for this, you are being productive, and also meeting people as a bonus.

I once went to a writing group where I spent 3 hours writing, and I also met and became friends with another writer. Because we were both passionate about the same thing, writing, it was incredibly easy to build a friendship with him. And building a friendship with him was just a side-effect of me spending 3 hours being productive. I did not have to spend 5 hours in a bar or nightclub talking to strangers, trying to find someone I share something in common with and failing most of the time. With the writing group, the amount of time spent trying to make friends was actually 0, as the 3 hours was spent productively writing.

Which is better, wasting 5 hours to make no friends and have nothing to show for it, or spending 3 hours writing and at the end of it making 1 friend I connect with and having 3 hours of writing work to show for it? From both a productive and social viewpoint, the second way is better.

How Friendships Are Usually Formed

Think back to all the friendships you had. It was often built around sharing something in common. Maybe the friends from your high school who you played football with, or your musical friends who you like singing with, or your friends who you like to meet up to do computer programming with. All these friendships were built around a shared interest. If you want to make friends, you need to use this and find other people who you share things in common with.

Talking to random strangers hoping you will eventually meet someone who likes what you like will not work. You need to go to places where your people will be, and ideally you will want these events to have a social aspect to it where those attending it want to meet others. This is why I am such a big fan of meet-up groups. 

A friend of mine who likes dancing once told me that most people would get bored of listening to him talk for hours about his passion of dancing. The only people who liked to hear him talk about this were other dancers. When he was in situations with other dancers, he would make friends automatically and instantaneously without trying to, and these friendships would last a long time. So whenever the wants to make friends, he just goes to dance classes. He also likes travelling and living overseas in different countries for a few months. When he goes abroad, he will also attend dance classes there, as he knows he can build a network quickly by doing this.

These are the benefits of being intelligent about how you meet people. You can make friends who share things in common with you, who will like to talk for hours and hours about topics you are interested in (rather than you telling it to random strangers who will get bored easily), and all for a lot less time and effort. If you find you are having difficulty in conversations with some people, maybe it’s because you two share nothing in common. Maybe you need more friends in your life who have similar hobbies and interests.

You also have to remember what your parents told you when you were young: “Don’t talk to random strangers on the street, it can be dangerous.” The risk to your safety is another big factor you have to think about. I’m not saying everyone at meet-up groups will be safe, but since there are more people there, and in my experience generally a person has to register through a website with their details to attend, there is more accountability and safety. If you are in a location where there are no safe meet-up groups, then you will need to find an alternative where people who share your hobbies and interests can meet in a safe setting. But you definitely do not want to make friends by talking to random strangers on the street.

Another way to improve your social life and make more friends if you feel you need more, is to try to reconnect with old friends who you had a good connection with, but drifted apart because of time. This isn’t a method that is available to everyone, as maybe you or they have moved far away, or they are not interested in rebuilding the friendship. But it’s one social strategy to keep in mind that isn’t too time-consuming.

Final Remarks

I’m going to briefly summarize what I said about meeting people so it will be remembered because it is important. Your strategy to make friends should not be to talk to random strangers on the street or in bars and nightclubs because it’s wasting too much time. Time that can be used to do something productive. It goes against the Law of Productivity to try to make friends by talking to random strangers.

It also can be annoying, and people can find it harassing to have others coming up and talking to them when they are in the streets or grocery shopping. Your odds of making friends this way is hard because most of them are not looking to make friends, they will not trust you because to them you are also a random stranger, and you will need to talk to a lot of people to find someone you share hobbies in common with. You will waste a lot of time doing this. Time which could be invested into doing something productive.

Don’t waste time socializing and trying to make friends. Focus on what is important. Your time on earth is limited. Invest it wisely.

I want to leave you with this quote by Will Smith: “Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to you. And stay.” Absolutely correct.

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