How productive is it to listen to productivity gurus?

I was making my way slowly through one of my dismally prosaic little to-do lists – ‘pay the water bill’ ‘wash hair’, etc. – when the voice of the journalist Helen Lewis came on Radio 4 talking about productivity. It’s the Holy Grail of modern life, apparently, and we are now constantly looking for ‘charismatic individuals’ to help us maximise it. Her writer friend Julian Simpson is obsessed with the topic, she said, even though he disarmingly admitted what some of us may quickly have suspected, that ‘my interest in productivity manifests itself when I need to be doing something else’. 

My ears pricked up, however, when Simpson named one of the leading ‘productivity gurus’ as James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. This book is a vigorous guide to how small, oft-repeated actions can eventually result in what Clear calls ‘the compound interest of self-improvement’. It has sold more than nine million copies worldwide, including to me. For just as the alcoholic daydreams of sobriety, I recall imagining that Atomic Habits might render me more energetic and orderly. Might I perhaps even be able to inspire junior family members with my new regime? In theory, much of his advice seems solid enough: if you want to remember to send more thank-you notes, he says, keep stationery on your desk. When you’ve finished your dinner, stick your plate straight into the dishwasher. So far, so good.

Yet it turns out that Clear – who has more than 870,000 Twitter followers – is just the daddy of a pack of other productivity gurus, each frantically advising their followers on how to wring more out of their days. One is called Ali Abdaal, a genial former NHS doctor who has discovered he can make significantly more cash with his YouTube channel, which boasts 4.15