Seconds | Discourse 002

© 2025 Bill Schieken

“The most invisible form of wasted time is doing a good job on an unimportant task.”

I’m pretty sure that when James Clear wrote this, he meant it as a pejorative. I read it as an invitation. An argument for curiosity. Permission, even.

If you’ve read Atomic Habits, you know Clear is a process guy. For him, it’s systems, not goals, that drive long-term success. Achieving one percent improvement each day compounds into something meaningful over time. If you’re a cycling fan, this may sound familiar, and, in fact, early in Atomic Habits, Clear writes about Dave Brailsford, British Cycling and marginal gains. None of this is revolutionary, but it keeps the pages and the wheels turning.

In the past decade, a significant portion of self-help discourse has drifted toward productivity and hustle culture. The central question has become: How can we maximize every second of every day to achieve our goals of fame and fortune? Or something along those lines.

I don’t really believe in guilty pleasures. I’m all for enjoying what you enjoy without judgment, but it still seems a little silly to admit that I love self-help and productivity books. I find them fascinating and read them with the same entertainment value as a mystery novel. This is probably antithetical to the lessons being preached in many of these publications. I’m using productivity books to procrastinate. Put that in your irony pipe and smoke it, Alanis.

But if I look at this analytically, in a Brailsfordian manner, is it really procrastination? Maybe it’s more of an exploration. A way of giving the brain space to wander without the pressure of the outcome being preached.

If I followed Clear’s maxim strictly, I shouldn’t be writing this. This essay exists solely because I spent time on something unimportant. Which means, by his definition, I’ve already failed.

As clever as it sounds, I’m likely bending Clear’s point to suit my own—a useful technique I learned from reading these books.

His position is probably closer to Cal Newport's argument that wasting time stems from pseudo-productivity—answering emails, attending meetings and replying to Slack messages—rather than from engaging in high-value deep work. Newport proposes that we embrace what he calls slow productivity: doing fewer, higher-quality tasks and taking intentional breaks. Rather than feigning productivity, Newport’s aim is fewer tasks, done better.

Newport also doesn’t believe in a “to-do list,” and he’s not alone. Somehow, the to-do list has gone out of vogue. And that makes me sad. If there’s one thing I’ve embraced from being productivity-curious, it’s that I love a to-do list. But it seems that is just old-world thinking.

Newport structures his day around time blocks, fitting tasks into calendar increments. If he has two hours free in the morning, he does his most intensive, focused work then. During a few free minutes between meetings, he answers a quick email or maybe takes out the trash. Instead of trying to force a task that requires some deep thinking into a part of the day in which you know you’re going to be interrupted, the tasks should fit the time available. Cal calls this time blocking; I call it waking up early. Or going to sleep late. Productivity that runs on Dunkin’.

Similarly, Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals, eschews the “To-Do List” in favor of the “Done List.” This idea—that instead of fretting over what still needs to be done, we focus on what has already been accomplished—kind of broke my brain.

Urging people to pay less attention to tasks ahead and more to completed achievement creates the classic Pink Floyd dilemma, wherein “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Or maybe, sticking with aged British bands, it’s the Wire Paradox in which A Bell Is A Cup Until It’s Struck.

Whichever you prefer, if you don’t know what the tasks are, how are you supposed to complete them and add them to the done list? I’m all for being positive and taking stock in my accomplishments, but I also need to know what I need to accomplish. I need that to-do list.

Brain teasers aside, Burkeman may be my favorite among the productivity gurus because he pushes back against glorifying the grind and focuses on accomplishing what is within reason. He warns against the Efficiency Trap, where “The more efficient you become, the more you will find yourself with more to do, and busier than before.”

Compare this to Matthew Dicks, author of Storyworthy, who doesn’t believe a second should pass without you grabbing it and strangle-holding those few ticks of the clock into productivity submission. For instance, Dicks wants you to leverage the times when you are waiting in line at the store, picking up your kids, etc, to pull out your computer and get to work. No downtime.

This seems exhausting and impossible to maintain.

I’m all for not staring at your phone while killing time. But I also believe productivity isn’t always measured on a spreadsheet. In those instances when I find myself with a few minutes of downtime, I prefer to put my phone away and look at the other people staring at theirs, imagining what they’re thinking. Not quantifiably productive, but every once in a while, a thought worth remembering may pop into your head that you can jot down and bring back to life weeks later for your new Substack.

I’ve also started carrying a dumb phone that is really just an e-reader with nothing else on it. I can pull that out and read a book and not stick out in a crowd because it still looks like I’m on my phone.

And as superior as this may make me feel, there’s always somebody more superior.

Modern Stoicism guy Ryan Holiday espouses a similar ethos, but his goes one step further. He also doesn’t want you to waste a second of your precious time, and while he favors reading over Dicksian work, for Holiday, just reading is no better than scrolling TikTok.

“If you’re not reading with a pen, you’re not really reading,” Holiday insists. “If you’re not making notes or underlining, maybe the book isn’t worth it. Reading is a conversation. Great readers underline, make margin notes, ask questions, and challenge the author. They put books to the test.”

I am obsessed with this notion that reading is meaningless if you’re not taking notes. This man owns a bookstore, and he seems to want to suck all of the joy out of reading. It’s hard enough to convince people that reading can be fun, and it’s not homework. Especially when you explicitly tell them it’s homework.

The bottom line is that in the productivity industrial complex, every second counts. First Brailsford, now Lance. I can’t get away from cycling if I tried. What the systems-focused self-help high council wants you to believe is that you must meaningfully account for every tick of the clock, and spending time with your thoughts or reading for enjoyment doesn’t bring you any closer to efficiency nirvana. It’s not enough to just read; you have to read with a purpose. It’s not enough to just get things done; those things have to matter.

Which is why I consume these books purely for entertainment. I endorse wasting time. Daydreaming. Reading a book and forgetting it as soon as you finish. Not everything you do needs to be explicitly important.

This post is not important. And you’re probably reading it on your phone.

I enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

In my world, that’s a productive use of time for both of us.

Go mark it in green on your habit tracker.

For Your Consideration:

Of all the productivity books I’ve consumed, I keep coming back to Oliver Burkeman. Four Thousand Weeks is excellent. Meditations for Mortals may be better.

Update on Discourse 001: If you’re scoring at home, I’ve successfully read the April 13 New Yorker issue cover to cover. The Sam Altman and Peptides articles are wild.