Productivity culture is coming for my hobbies. 🫡

I’m a planful person. But yesterday, impulsivity struck, and I decided to go for a bike ride in the middle of the day. In particular, I wanted to explore a trail near my house that eventually links up to the Erie Canalway Trail (which is like 360 miles of path-only biking, the glory!). Subverting car culture by riding on trails fills me with unencumbered glee.

So I just… did it. (Importantly: I don’t have a full-time job right now, I have a flexible schedule, I am receiving external financial support; this ride was uniquely possible due to these details, I am grateful.)

Only, here’s the thing: rather than just getting on my bike and riding, I realized that there were… steps to complete. And specifically, there were two distinct types of steps to complete: the preparation steps, and—regrettably—the productivity steps.

Preparation

Listen: I did not immediately/impulsively start riding—as some might, because that is a totally lovely way of interacting with yourself and your bike—I had to prepare. (Planful person.) This included putting on “the right” clothes, packing a saddle bag, forgetting and then remembering my lock, contemplating what snacks I might need if I got hungry in an hour, searching for the top of my water bottle for 10 minutes before eventually giving up and using a different one… you get the idea.

Productivity

Okay, hear me out on this one: upon my determination that I would spend X number of hours in my day riding my bike FOR FUN, my next immediate thought was: But I was supposed to go to the dairy today. I needed eggs, badly, for ye olde breakfast routine, and the half-and-half supply was dwindling. So I began the process of negotiating with myself: Well, Beal, my Productivity Brain asked me, What if you rode your bike to a store where you could get eggs and half-and-half, howsabout THAT?

More steps: I spent several minutes in front of my computer, looking at maps, determining where the trail ended and exactly what roads I’d need to follow to weave my way to a farm market that I knew was nearby (ish). I called said farm market ON THE PHONE to see if they did, indeed, have eggs and half-and-half.

“Yes!” the owner told me.

“Egg-cellent,” I joked with her, laughing with the deluded and private thrill of a chronic multitasker. “See you soon.”

Only then, confident I’d be able to simultaneously accomplish my shopping goals, did I start out on my bike ride. This was not leisure for leisure’s sake. (Dear reader: I’m not proud of this, in case that wasn’t obvious, but we are practicing self-compassion here!)

Nonetheless, the ride was extremely pleasant. When I got to the trailhead, someone was just finishing up their jog, ending where I’d started. “Is this the end of the trail?” he asked me. “I think so,” I said.

“This is my first time on it, even though I’ve lived here for years,” he concluded resolutely, pacing around. “Me too!” I nearly shrieked.

The trail backs up on suburban yards, and residents have planted vegetable gardens and huge perennial beds in the sunshine that surrounds it. In places, it passes directly behind office buildings and grocery stores, and for a minute I envisioned virtuously doing all my grocery shopping by bike. I passed dog walkers and people dressed in work clothes out for a lunchtime stroll.

As I rode, I was glad I’d prepared: that I’d put sunscreen on, packed the banana that made for a great mid-ride snack, had enough water. This is something that’s changed in me over the past few years: my patience for logistics, for preparedness, has skyrocketed.

Preparation has, in fact, become the root of everyday luxuries in my life. Like a picnic that includes taking the time to pack a cutting board so you can put your cheese and crackers on a nice surface. The bag I pack for my weekend trip that includes just a few extras: my own pillow, my favorite tea, my slippers. I don’t do it all the time—but when I do, it’s simple stuff, and it makes life just a little nicer.

Don’t get me wrong: these kinds of logistics used to be a total yank. And I think there are two reasons why they aren’t anymore: I’m getting older. Also, meditation.

On getting older: this one’s simple math. The more times you pack a picnic, the better you get at knowing what you want to bring. And the fewer compromises you’re willing to make on “looking stupid” or “being judged for being over-prepared” because you simply care less about what others think, and because the satisfaction of that preparation severely outweighs those imposter thoughts. (Also, my fellow 30- and 40-somethings are also decreasingly judgmental, which is just, like, such a pro of aging. We are, quite literally, all in it together.)

Relatedly, meditation: There is joy in the preparation itself! And in brewing a tea that you love! Experience the present fully! Embody your own experience of life! My thoughts aren’t me! Being here now is fucking glorious! And hard! Quoth my wise friend Meg: “It’s hard to [meditate]. The only thing harder is not to.”

But if the preparation steps helped me be more present, then the productivity mindset for biking? Unequivocally would not recommend.

Would it be so great to eventually find biking to be so easy that I use it as my main mode of transportation? Yes. Do I (still) (currently) live in a car-centric world, as much as I like to delude myself otherwise? Also yes. Does riding a bike to get things “done” in part subvert that car culture? Yes. Is it rendered even harder by that car culture? YES.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t that buying eggs was bad. I needed them, and now I have them, and, great news, I ate them for breakfast today.

The bummer part was the approach I brought to it: that I’d be “getting something done” if I stopped for eggs, that I could somehow glorify my actions or bestow gold stars upon myself if I achievement-stacked my day or planned every minute of it. As someone who has gone through a lot of life believing that was true, I can now surely attest to the fact that days NEVER go as planned. Not at work, not at home, not on a 20-mile bike ride to get eggs.

AND YET: I still mistake it to be true. I still trap myself into doing things I’m supposed to, or should do, like buy EGGS on a BIKE RIDE. Do y’all know how tricky it is to get EGGS home on a BIKE without BREAKING THEM? Reader, take note: this alone is a hilariously good reason not to try to smush productivity into your hobbies.

As if to teach me this lesson, the universe prepared a smorgasbord of unpredicted delights to experience on the 20-mile egg ride:

• I went to the farm market to get the eggs, and they were egg-spensive. More than I wanted to pay, more than I have been paying for local + soy-free + hand harvested guilt-free eggs, and yet they bore none of those characteristics. So, I got a donut instead, and read my book on the lawn a while. Another couple of people on bikes pulled up to buy groceries and we chatted for a few minutes.
• The credit card minimum at the store was $5, and my total (donut + cucumber + head of lettuce) came to $4.52. But then I remembered this is the store that sells my cat’s favorite toys, so I added one to my order. And: still no eggs.
• I reworked my route to stop somewhere else for eggs on the way home. There, I got the virtuous eggs I wanted, and I ran into even more cyclists. We talked about the glory of buying groceries by bike, and how you don’t even need fancy equipment to do it. (If there’s one thing cyclists like to talk about, it’s their fancy equipment, so this was a real treat for me.)
• Eggs in tow, I had to bike much more slowly on the way home, lest a bump or a mid-trail tree root imperil my fragile cargo. No surprise here: I like to bike AS FAST AS I CAN to make things AS HARD AS POSSIBLE for myself. My god, my Productivity Brain speculated. This’ll take forever. But, dear reader, you know what? It didn’t. As I rode, I was super-focused on my surroundings: the terrain, the black walnuts littering the path, the curves in the route. It seemed like hardly any time had passed by the time I’d reached the end of the trail.

In The World Today, there seem to be two hobby-related camps.

The first screams, monetize, monetize, monetize! Do what you love and you won’t work a day in your life! Sprinkle a little hustle culture over the things you’re good at and you’ll get fame (read: millions of followers) AND fortune (read: ad sponsorships)! Let us see how you live your life and in exchange you can spend all your time online showing the rest of us how you live your life!

It’s circular, problematic logic. It also sounds lonely. And yet, it’s such an easy trap! I’m training to become a yoga teacher, and both the voice in my head AND everyone who hears I’ve quit my job says, “ohmigosh, so you’re gonna get a job teaching yoga!?”

I appreciate y’all believing in me: I really, genuinely feel it. AND it also makes me think about this episode of the Hurry Slowly podcast in which Miki Kashtan talks about how money cheapens the interpersonal exchanges we have, and clouds our ability to be in community with one another. And, like, what does it say about us as a culture that we commodify yoga, a discipline that invites us to awaken to our full aliveness, to our tender hearts, to the barriers that we place between ourselves and the experience of true fulfillment?!

Adding grocery-buying into my bike ride had the effect of cheapening its intention—which (*~checks notes~*) had started out as just “to explore.” And in my productivity-culture-fueled quest to empty out my to-do list, I went on ahead and made it about more doing and more achieving.

So, the other hobby camp seems to be, get a hobby, it’s good for you. This can be in the “you don’t know how to do anything other than work” way or the “start knitting, it’ll help you in the apocalypse” way. But this camp also seems to either a) accept that to be a human working under capitalism you need a counterweight to stay sane, which feels like a binary bummer, or b) place excessive value on turning inward and protecting our own as the world around us becomes increasingly hostile.

THESE TWO OPTIONS SUCK. The way the world is set up today disrupts community. It asks us to prioritize our own needs over everything else. When I set out on my bike ride, I was puzzling over a complicated equation in my head involving goal completion + conserving energy + how much time do I really have = … ? I was actually thinking about the above hobby conundrum. I was completely wrapped up in accomplishing my own goals. But in fact I didn’t need to think about anything. All the bike path asked of me was to enjoy the freakin’ journey, and if that isn’t an overly didactic metaphor, I don’t know what is.

We spend so much time accounting for, rather than simply living, our days. At the risk of oversimplifying here, I guess the thesis here is maybe just… try things? Meg’s voice in my head again: the only thing harder is to not try? See how it feels. Explore the landscape. Notice what’s growing. Say “hi” to the people you encounter. Meet their eyes. Don’t let your destination just be eggs. Bike more slowly. Enjoy the ride.

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