There is a linguistic thing going on – but it’s scarcely realized. There was a discussion of metaphors and words on my blog a couple of months ago in which I generally went overboard and made an ass of myself by taking a very hard line, but the line of reasoning is basically correct.

You’re absolutely right: when words get diluted, mutated, coopted, and abused, they lose the power to motivate and direct like they once did. I fear “productivity”, “passion”, “happiness”, and such are now too impotent for some of us, but we’re a bit stuck because language is used for the transmission of ideas and we must use the words other people use to communicate effectively.

I still love your one liners. “Words with no accountability have no utility.” Great line, great thought, and great article.

Productivity is a nominalization–a noun that is derived from a verb. In this case the verb is “produce.” I think there are good reasons we don’t consider an enjoyable dinner with friends to have produced something, for producing generally means “for some other end,” not as an end in itself.

I like that David Allen has reframed what productivity means though, for he is bringing mindfulness and stress-reduction into corporate environments. It’s bringing consciousness and intentionality to producing–what are we producing, why are we producing it, how does the effect of producing it affect people, etc.

It’s almost like something about producing automatically takes one out of a mindful state, out of an awareness of the present moment, out of an awareness of why we are producing this rather than something else. Anything that can help remind us of what is important in these moments is good, in my opinion. Yet still there might be other things that are needed to, like a balance between activities that produce and activities that don’t!

I think that’s brilliant.