Half-Baked Thoughts

Are Productivity Gurus the Priests of our Generation

Hi,

Hope you are doing well. Over the last few months, I have been following a lot of productivity gurus and startup gyan folks on Twitter. This got me thinking, are they the priests of our generation?

Who were priests? Priests were common folk who claimed to guide others to greater treasures they might not themselves possess. Some of them might have been deeply spiritual, engaging with their philosophies day in and day out and sharing their learnings with the public. Many, if not most were charlatans masquerading as wisemen offering cures for the human condition. It could be the offer of a certain and utopian future, free of all mental pressure as heaven or the stick of having to rot in hell for all eternity.

Modern productivity gurus on the other hand include people who have been working on their gigs for around a decade and sharing what worked for them and what did not. More often than not, they often claim legitimacy from an apparent super human ability to do things and making choices the masses cannot afford to make. While it is great that by exposing their failures they are making themselves vulnerable and accessible, a lot of them gain legitimacy merely because they are looped in to the system of other productivity gurus or start up gyanchods. Most gurus tell you that you implement their personal finance hacks to be able to retire soon or ignore them and be stuck in your office cubicle and weekly timesheets for the next 50 years.

As an experiment, look at all folks you follow in any area of interest. While some of them provide value to you, you follow the others only because they pop in the same context and are part of the same cliques. They flourish due to mere association with valuable individuals.

Maybe this was an unprovoked rant but I think this question is worth exploring.

Looking forward to writing to you soon.