Devotion vs. Productivity?

Devotion vs. Productivity: What’s in a Name?

That’s the title of a video by @Eryk.

I enjoy his quiet, thoughtful and thought-filled videos. Curious to hear his take on this concept, I clicked over.

“It’s not that productivity is separate from devotion, but it places productivity under devotion. That the focus is devoting myself to what I’m doing…”

I’m visualizing something like a simple drawing of a house. I know, Eryk’s video is about 2 concepts – my brain kinda ran with the idea so now I’ve got five.

Productivity being the basement or subfloor as it is the least important of these five concepts. While it is under all the others, it does still matter though simply because it’s nice to be able to get tings done. But it matters the least of these five concepts, at least here in relation to our quality of life.

Creativity and curiosity live on the ground floor. They’re surface level, easily accessible. A good place to hang out in.They enable us to have fun. Life is just plain better having them around.

Devotion, though, requires action to get to. You’ve got to intentionally choose to seek it out, climbing the stairs or taking the elevator to get to that head space. Devotion is a choice. Up here it’s like being in a treehouse, kind of magical. It’s very welcoming to our inner younger selves. I agree with Eryk here that devotion is a form of mindfulness. By devoting ourselves to whatever it is we spend our time on we also (usually) gain a bigger, broader, softer picture of our lives.

And it’s this more holistic, wider viewpoint gives us access to the last level: joy. Sure, you can have moments of joy without devotion, but to sustainably live with joy you must also live mindfully (with devotion). It’s your devotion to the moment (i.e. mindfulness) that unlocks your gaze from the past or the future so that you can see all the magic in your everyday, mundane, and beautiful life.

At least, that’s my take on it.

Devotion/Mindfulness helps us anchor into the present moment. That place of presence is where I believe joy is found.

…hmmm…

I don’t know.

I just made that all up as my pen was scratching across the page.

Maybe it’s utter nonsense to anyone outside my head but, to me, it feels like a roadmap into the radical acceptance I’m needing to reach (yet again).

You see, I’ve very, very recently finally been able to accept that I need to file for disability.

It’s been bringing up a lot for me. Things like:

• Who am I if I don’t run my small business and/or hold a job?
• What do this mean for my future?
• How can I be a valuable partner without helping with our precarious financial situation?
• What was the point of fighting so hard to finish my BA degree in 2017 only to now have to give up on to grad school and then opening my own practice?

Also, it turns out I’ve still got tons and tones of internalized ableism-and-capitalism lurking around in my head space too.

So, yeah, it’s been a lot to process.

And while I say I’ve accepted it’s time to apply for disability, I mean only that I’ve accepted the pragmatic fact of it all. This pragmatic acceptance -seeing the truth of what my body/brain are able to do – probably took me years longer than was healthy.

But by no means have I made or found peace with it yet – that is a whole other experience I’m not fully sure how to access yet. Who knows how long or winding a road that’ll be.

I do know that making peace with something uncomfortable or painful is, for me at least, a path that requires curiosity and softness towards myself.

Another thing Eryk said that felt helpful about choosing devotion over productivity was he called this switch “the long game.” That also feels gentle, peaceful, patient. Those are all good, old-wound healing kinda things. It feels like love, true unconditional love for myself to be so focused on devotion to my life instead of our culture’s productivity worship.

I get so very little done in a day. It tends to frustrate the hell out of me.

The thing is, getting frustrated and angry at myself never gave me a power boost or cleared out my foggy brain one bit, it only mudded my brain up even more. I like the idea of placing productivity under devotion. It offers me to chance to let go of the frustration. I hope practicing this “long game” helps me to stay more grounded in the moment and then have these moments to appreciate at the end of the day.

Like yesterday, I made a loaf of banana applesauce almond flour bread and then I ….

Yep, that’s it.

That is all I got done outside of feeding and other basic care tasks.

One loaf of banana bread.

Were I to focus on productivity, I’d be more inclined to see the piles of papers on my desk that need sorting and dealing with, or that high-protein snack bar recipe I still need to work on, or the mess of projects still unfinished covering the entire dining room table, or … I’m sure you get it.

But while I was making the banana bread I keep focusing on my husband’s smile when he comes home to the smell of that bread fresh out of the oven.

Because I’d used up all my spoons creating that bread, dinner was a bowl of cottage cheese and some tortilla chips with a glass of milk. Somehow though, I wasn’t nearly as sad or frustrated about that as much as I have been many, many other days. Mainly, I felt grateful we had food. Grateful I could enjoy watching a Girl with the Dogs grooming video while I ate. And, also, grateful that soon my husband would home and I’d get to see that smile of his again.

Mostly I was just happy that I’d devoted my spoons to making that bread.

This is a shift I very much needed in order to retain space for and access to joy.

There’s still plenty of grieving I’ve left to do before I reach unconditional radical acceptance of it all. I don’t want to give up those dreams. I don’t want to spend the vast majority of my days inside, on a bed – I’m typing this reclining in my daybed.

But this is life with severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Moving more into this space will free up energy spent berating myself or feeling like a loser because of my limitations. Feeling grateful I ate cottage cheese and tortilla chips for dinner. This shift will bring more joy, more magic into my life.

It’s not gonna heal my body.

It’s not gonna prevent the goddamn cancer from returning.

But this shift will hopefully offer me more joy within this little life that I actually do have. I can’t think of anything more magical than that.

Oh, and I wanted to make sure to share something Eryk said towards the end of his video about this mindset shift:

“if it is just mind games, it seems to help. So, I’m gonna keep playing the mind game.”

If I’d had the energy to fist bump the air when he said that I probably would have.

Because, really? It is the truth. So many of the rules or lens or beliefs we live our lives by are just made up. As I’m thinking about it, aren’t like 99.9% of the rules and beliefs we live by just mind games we agree to participate in? Why not choose a game that makes living my life better?

So thanks, Eryk, your video is already helping.

Here’s to playing mind games that bring us joy and magic and connection.

Thank you for reading.

Love, Kat

If you’re interested to watch his video, it’s pasted below: