The timer on my phone buzzed, a sharp, insistent thing against the quiet of the room. Fifteen minutes. That’s what I’d given myself. My thumb, aching a little, hovered over the screen. Tap. Follow. Scroll. Tap. Follow. Scroll. The faces blurred, the items on offer became a uniform, meaningless tapestry. I wasn’t looking for inspiration, wasn’t connecting with anyone, wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing. Just tapping, following, creating a digital trail of ‘engagement’ that felt about as authentic as a cardboard cutout of a celebrity. The goal: follow as many new accounts as possible on Poshmark, a ritual whispered about in online groups as one of the 3 ‘essential’ growth hacks.
I’d been told, over and over again, that this mindless activity would magically translate into sales. A follow-for-follow strategy, a game of digital tag where the prize was a higher number next to your follower count, which supposedly pleased the almighty algorithm. It’s a strategy that feels like meticulously raking leaves on a windy day, convinced the wind will eventually stop because of your effort. This isn’t productivity; it’s an elaborate pantomime. It’s ‘productivity theater’ – the performance of work, designed to look busy, to generate data points, but often divorced from actual, tangible results. My mind, I confess, drifted to the ridiculousness of it all, not unlike the moment earlier this morning when I finally realized my fly had been open through three separate, earnest conversations. A small, public performance, completely unaware of the private reality.
The frustration gnawed. We’ve become so adept at confusing activity with achievement. Our digital platforms, in their relentless pursuit of ‘engagement,’ have subtly trained us to become excellent performers in this theater. They demand constant, visible proof of effort: a steady stream of posts, likes, shares, comments, follows. These are the new micromanagers, not asking for innovation or deep work, but for the visible, trackable pulse of busy hands. It’s a phenomenon that extends far beyond a reselling app, touching everything from the gig economy to corporate boardrooms. People clock in, not to solve complex problems, but to generate a consistent stream of deliverables, often prioritizing quantity over quality, visibility over profundity. I think about the 23 email threads I left untouched that day, while focusing on ‘growth’.
The Soil Conservationist’s Tale
Consider Cameron G., a soil conservationist I met on a project 3 years ago. His work is profoundly real: dirty hands, muddy boots, the slow, patient process of understanding ecosystems. He showed me how a single, well-placed check dam could prevent millions of dollars in erosion over a decade, but also lamented the 3 hours he spent weekly filling out compliance reports that demanded proof of ‘active engagement’ with local landowners, regardless of whether those engagements actually led to better soil practices. He spoke of being pressured to attend 3 ‘community outreach’ meetings a month, even if the real work was out in the field, observing runoff patterns or testing soil composition. The reports, he observed, became the product, not the conserved soil itself. He called it ‘papering over the cracks,’ a bureaucratic dance designed to satisfy auditors, not improve the land.
Bureaucratic Dance
Tangible Impact
His stories resonated deeply with my Poshmark experience. We’re both caught in systems that prioritize the measurable performance over the meaningful outcome. The algorithm, whether on a social platform or in a corporate HR system, doesn’t care about the rich texture of your authentic connections or the nuanced understanding you bring to a problem. It wants inputs. It wants visible action. It wants you to follow 1003 accounts in an hour, because that’s a number it can log. It doesn’t ask if any of those follows led to a genuine conversation, a shared interest, or a sale. It simply records the ‘act’ of following. This creates a deeply unsettling feedback loop: the more we perform, the more the system demands performance, and the further we drift from the actual craft of our work.
The Algorithmic Grip
It’s a subtle shift, almost imperceptible at first. You start by genuinely engaging, by valuing the creative process, the strategic thinking. But then the numbers creep in. The platform dangles the promise of exponential growth if you just perform these small, repetitive tasks. You see others, seemingly ‘successful,’ adhering to these rituals, and a tiny, anxious part of your brain whispers, ‘Maybe they know something I don’t.’ So you join the chorus. You start doing the digital busywork. You sacrifice those 3 valuable minutes of genuine connection for 303 mindless taps. Before you know it, you’re spending 73% of your ‘work’ time on tasks that feel utterly devoid of purpose, chasing ghosts in the machine.
Reclaiming True Productivity
What happens when this performance becomes the primary mode of operation? We lose sight of what real productivity looks like. Real productivity isn’t about the frantic energy of constant movement; it’s about thoughtful creation, strategic problem-solving, and meaningful interaction. It’s about deep work, not digital busywork. It’s about building something of lasting value, not just feeding the beast of instantaneous metrics. And the irony is, in chasing these superficial metrics, we often neglect the very foundations that create sustainable success. Imagine Cameron G. neglecting his soil tests for more community meetings – the land would suffer, invisibly at first, then catastrophically.
Deep Work
Lasting Value
Meaningful Interaction
Leveraging Technology Wisely
This isn’t to say all digital tools are part of the problem. Far from it. The right tools can be incredibly liberating. They can take over the genuinely tedious, repetitive tasks, freeing us to focus on the truly impactful work. Tools like Closet Assistant are designed precisely for this: to automate the necessary but performative digital tasks, allowing users to reclaim their time and invest it in genuine engagement, creative photography, or strategic sourcing. It’s about choosing to leverage technology to serve our goals, rather than letting algorithms dictate our actions. It’s about making deliberate choices about where our energy goes, ensuring that our efforts align with our ultimate objectives, not just with visible data points.
We need to ask ourselves, critically, if the ‘work’ we’re doing is actually moving us forward, or if it’s just a performance for an audience of algorithms.
Legacy or Illusion?
Are we building a legacy, or just a digital illusion of busyness? The answer, I believe, lies in reclaiming our agency. It means stepping back from the incessant demands of the screen, understanding the true nature of value in our respective fields, and consciously choosing to invest our finite energy in tasks that genuinely contribute to our goals, not just to the data dashboards of others. It means daring to be less visibly ‘active’ but profoundly more effective. It means recognizing that sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is to simply stop performing, and start creating.