productivity vs. "the work of care"
Before you rev up that personal guilt jumbotron and make it replay all the exercising, tupperware-organizing, and sourdough-starting that you didn’t get to do this weekend (or even all the “actual work” piling up on your desk right now), read this piece from The New Republic — Against Productivity in a Pandemic — and remind yourself that surviving in a time of incredible uncertainty is more than enough.
I like this part best, on what we should focus on instead of wondering why we can’t just hurry up and crank out a King Lear:
While I’m still reading emails and scanning my drafts for revisions, my mind is miles away with the people that matter most to me. For those with the privilege and ability to conduct their work from home, the coming weeks should be a time to focus on ourselves, our communities, and our loved ones. It should be a time to do nothing and produce little without the accompanying feeling of guilt or panic caused by a ping from a higher-up that you should be doing more as the rest of your world slowly cranks to a halt.
The work of care, of real meaning, is what we should be concerning ourselves with now. It is not optimized, or “disrupting,” or any of that. It is just essential.
P.S. To all the new subscribers coming over here from Morning Brew’s quarantine planner, welcome! The water’s warm, sometimes this newsletter gets a lil’ weird, but generally I try to send you oneish link a day to something worthwhile. (And on Fridays, we do q&as!)
Deez Links is a dailyish newsletter written by @delia_cai. You can support the newsletter by sharing it or hitting up our merch store!