Before & After

Productivity means something different now. Let's embrace that.

- By Juliet Funt

Bryan Berg is a professional card stacker. He holds four Guinness World Records, including the tallest and largest house of cards—all freestanding. (As he says, “No tape, no glue, no tricks.”) Ironically, in Berg’s daily life, he describes himself as “the first person who would ever trip or spill a drink,” yet with the cards, his control is spectacular.

At trade shows he sleeps on-site, each day waking to behold the new layer or castle turret he added the day before, slowly seeing his undeniable progress. What a clear and gratifying experience that must be.

In simple moments, we too can have this kind of observable accomplishment. A sink full of greasy dishes turns into an empty one. A thousand jigsaw puzzle pieces become a golden retriever. But in the world of work, where there’s so much pressure to be productive, it’s especially tough to get that hit of before-andafter satisfaction. We spend most of our time in the messy middle of projects and are constantly putting out fires. We fly through to-do lists and stuff our calendars in search of a feeling of “I built that.” And yet we find ourselves lost in a constant state of what sociologist Juliet B. Shor calls “performative busyness.”