The Danger Of Obsessing Over Productivity - Anna Codrea-Rado - #441

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Anna Codrea-Rado. She's a productivity journalist, an author and a podcaster. Productivity dysmorphia is the persistent feeling of dissatisfaction after working. No matter how much you've got done, it's the inability to see your own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output. And it's everywhere. I wanted to ask Anna how we can deal with this very modern malady. Expect to learn why you can't hack creativity, how Anna deals with her workaholism, what the anti-work subreddit has got right, whether any social movement can avoid being co-opted by communists, the danger of admiring productivity gurus online, how to take pride in the work you've done, and much more. I feel like Anna's writing is hitting on something that a lot of people in the knowledge work world feel very acutely, which is this sort of pervasive, ambient sense that I could have done more, and I probably should have done more, and other people might be doing more, and that makes me feel bad, no matter how much I've actually done. So if you like what she talks about today, she can subscribe to her sub stack, because her writing is very, very good. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. You can protect your browsing and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. You're already paying for a Netflix subscription. So for an extra £1.59 a month or like $2 a month, you can 10x the amount of movies and series that you have access to, because it means you can change your location at the push of a button and immediately access whatever that territory has on offer. 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