Alright.

Alright.

Confession time:

I have not done anything today. It’s currently 3pm and I’ve taught my daughter her maths (math, americans), reading and writing. And I’ve made lunch and done the shopping.

But I’ve written nada, even though I’ve had the last hour to myself in the cabin.

And yes.

It’s for the reason you think.

(And I’m not even American! Stupid distracting elections…)

Well, that plus the fact that I only slept for five hours last night (no idea why).

But that actually ties in nicely nicely with what I’d planned to write about today which is…

The Plague of Performative Productivity!

So let me grab my pipe to help focus my tired brain and type up some thoughts on this disastrous dispensation.

Because far too many social media gurus practice this “Performative Productivity”.

A thing up with which I will not put.

Because guru’s Performative Productivity (PP) is productivity that's not really about production but performance.

And the problem with the gurus and their PP is that it’s so limp and useless that it’s ineffective at making anyone feel anything. It just doesn’t get the job done.

It’s productivity that's less focused on creating worthwhile content for people and more on meeting meaningless metrics.

I started thinking about this last week because come Monday evening I hadn’t written my daily email to the Cabin Crew, and, well, I never did end up writing it at all.

Well, that's half true.

Because I half-wrote some. Then I deleted them.

Then I wrote the start of what became this email but it wasn't finished.

The long and the short of it was that I was drawing a blank.

It had been a disaster of a day.

I got up that morning as optimistic as a Kamala Harris voter (sorry, couldn’t resist at least one election joke), with a plan to spent an hour putting up a new curtain rail and then roll into writing mode.

And, well, you can read all about that saga in last week’s issue “Avoiding the Bugmen”

But the thing is that even after all that, I could've churned something out last night. I had some time.

I could have even Crap GPTd it like some folks do. Or just head down and done something.

But I value my space in your inbox. I value the eagerness with which people read and reply to my emails. I value those conversations we have.

And I value your time.

So when I write something and it's not up to scratch?

I just delete it and move on.

I believe in daily emails. I really do. I give all my best stuff to my Carran’s Cabin Crew.

But I also believe in quality emails, magnetic, engaging emails, and so sometimes it's better to not send an email at all and instead turn it into a lesson the next day. Or the next week. Unlike the social media Gurus and the Content Creatooooors, I don't believe in performative productivity.

"You have to turn up every single day!"

I mean, sort of. You have to be willing to work every day. You have to show up.

But you can't just phone it in, sometimes it won't happen.

That's why I believe that keeping a "streak" of daily habits like writing your daily email so you can boast about it on social media is not the most important skill as a writer.

Far better is to learn to start again the next day when you have a bad one.

Because it happens to us all!

Maybe you too had a DIY disaster, or you got sucked into the election drama, or your kids kept you up all night.

When those days happen, either you can phone it in for some performative productivity, or you can learn to pick it up where you left off and get going.

I think that's far better.

Because the problem with Performative Productivity is that it chips away at the bond between writer and reader.

Between creator and consumer. And as I’ve written about before in these hallowed digital pages, that’s survivable for a low-grade marketer but not if you’re a writer building long-term bonds.

But “churnitout” performative productivity is a plague that goes way beyond emails and the like. See woke Hollywood as one example. When I originally started talking about this in the Cabin last week, Cabin Crewmember Ricky Ketchum wrote in with this insight:

He is absolutely right.

It’s pure performative productivity. Marvel churn out dozens of new films and TV shows and other garbage every year and they’re on a slow (or not so slow) slide to irrelevance as a result.

Why?

Because it’s performance, not productivity.

Every bad episode, every twerking twit of a scene, every lame message-driven film, every disappointingly scripted sludgefest…

…all of that chips away at the one thing that matters.

The bond with the fans!

Because if you leave your readers with a small sense of disappointment every time, they read a little less carefully, they look forward a little less to the next email/film/product.

And they start tuning out.

Writing a bad tweet isn’t a big deal. Your fans will take two seconds to see it and scroll by. Writing a bad email? That makes more of a dent, they wasted time on that. Writing a bad book or movie? That starts to tick people off…

…and none of that is to make you get all perfectionist and stop publishing.

I wrote a whole course on the “write” attitude to that.

You can get that here.

But suffice it to say now that it’s not the point I’m trying to make.

The point I’m trying to make is that the question you should be asking yourself is NOT “how do I keep up my writing streak”.

The question is: “how can I love my readers best?”

It’s not about what your writing can do for you, the writer, it’s about what your writing can do for them, the readers.

Get that right and all this performative productivity will fall into place.

Meanwhile, may your pipe puff pleasantly and your routine produce productively,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

But not quite fin for the fine folks in Craftsman’s Corner who keep the lights on around here.

For them, a sneaky but brilliant tactic I had used on me to build the bond with the fans hugely. I’m kind of in awe of this and will definitely be diving deep into how to apply it to my own stuff wherever possible.

It’s genius.

But it’s only for current subscribers…

P.s. if you’re struggling with all this? Struggling to be truly productive and not just performatively?

Keep going.