The Total Scam of Productivity Advice

I read all the books and tried all the hacks in a mad quest to optimize my time. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [Is It Even Possible to Become More Productive?]( Is It Even Possible to Become More Productive? Time was the problem, I assumed: There was enough of it; I just wasn’t using it right. Or maybe the problem was my attention span. I couldn’t focus. Luckily, there were products for this. First, I tried blue-light-filtering glasses. Then I bought a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato and became devoted to the Pomodoro technique, an Italian idea wherein you spend twenty-five minutes working, then five minutes taking a break; repeat until the day is over. (Italians: very worried about productivity.) I made lists, I took long walks, I meditated, I locked my phone in Tupperware with a clock that counted down until it would be free. It did not escape me how similar this gadget was to a time bomb. I had no idea what it even meant to produce enough work. Exactly how much was enough? In pursuit of answers, I polled friends: How many hours do you spend per day working? Fruitless. (“A million.” “Ugh, like zero.”) I started reading a column in New York mag’s The Cut called “How I Get It Done.” Everyone interviewed seemed to know exactly how much “enough” was, and none struggled to achieve it. I’d been mesmerized by the column ever since a CEO told the column’s writer: “I don’t take breaks.” This same person claimed to have sixty categories for emails and a color-coded system for arranging them. She was so productive, though I had no idea what she was producing. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [Robert Downey Jr. Doesn’t See Things the Way You Do]( Robert Downey Jr. Doesn’t See Things the Way You Do Downey has a way of regarding everything in his life—big stuff, missing cats, random artifacts in the mail, Oscar campaigns—on the same scale, piles of fascinating puzzle pieces that fit together in a way none of us may ever understand but that is nonetheless intoxicating for him to try to figure out. (This is part of why talking with him can be, as Gwyneth Paltrow puts it, “nonlinear, like talking to a Dalí painting.”) That expansive view of life also seems to inform his belief in generosity—giving and taking and vouching and loyalty and restitution, and “if you want to have a friend, be a friend,” as he says. His own instinctive generosity emerges in forms both grand and almost undetectable. The first time Hoa Xuande, the young star of The Sympathizer, stepped on set to film with Downey, Downey approached him. “He said, ‘Brother, we’re going to screw this thing up together. Don’t worry about it,’ ” Xuande says. “He could see how nervous I was, and I appreciated that.” [Read the Full Story]( [The Luggage Your Favorite Celebrities Won’t Travel Without]( The Luggage Your Favorite Celebrities Won’t Travel Without When you think of how celebrities travel—and I’m talking about the serious A-listers here—a few ideas might come to mind. Private jets, unlimited Champagne and caviar on board, and security that definitely doesn’t yell at them to remove their belts. This all might very well be true for some celebrities, but others are just like us—headin’ to the airport with a big ol’ bag designed to get the job done. Sure, their suitcases may be stuffed to the brim with high-end toiletries and designer fashion, but I’m less interested in what the celebs are packing and much more interested in what they’re rolling alongside them. Don’t expect to see these star athletes, actors, and musicians at the airport with a rickety old four-wheeler they bought online two days earlier. From an eighty dollar Herschel backpack to a nearly two-grand Rimowa suitcase, this is the luggage that our favorite boldfaced names are using. [Read the Full Story]( [The Undeniable Joel Kim Booster]( The Undeniable Joel Kim Booster For years, Booster has mined his biography for stand-up material, even though the version of himself he plays onstage is “like 30 percent of what’s inside me, and it’s mostly put on.” The line for which he’s most famous is probably “I knew I was gay before I knew I was Asian,” from his 2017 Comedy Central special. Some people, he thinks, will likely always know him for that. In this season of Loot, Nicholas will resemble Joel a little more: The writers decided the character was adopted by white parents, just like Booster. He was into it right away because of how natural the representation of a transracial adoption comes across. Nicholas’s parents just show up onscreen and no one loses their mind. Away from Loot, Booster is now working on a new hour of stand-up material that marks a “reinvention” for him. Much of his earlier stand-up played off the audience’s expectations of him. He’d set up a bit with the boastful phrase “As a hot person. . .” For a while, the joke felt subversive; getting an audience to laugh along with you after that proclamation is hard. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe they weren’t exactly laughing with him. In the new hour, “a lot of it is about confidence, and it’s a lot about refinding confidence in doing this and figuring out if there is a point of view left in me that has anything interesting to say.” [Read the Full Story]( [The 41 Best New Hotels in North America and Europe 2024]( The 41 Best New Hotels in North America and Europe 2024 A truly great hotel can’t be measured solely by the fancy soap in the marble bath, the plushness of the bed, or the quality of the chocolate provided with turndown service. We all love these little touches of luxury, of course. But they’ve become standardized—a way of offering the predictability that many travelers crave. Forgive us, but that’s not a very exciting way to explore the world. The most memorable travel experiences are the ones we didn’t expect and can’t replicate anywhere else. The properties on this year’s Best New Hotels list, our third, prove that a hotel that goes against the grain of ho-hum luxury can change the vibrations of its neighborhood and its city. More importantly, it can change the way you see a place. If all you really want are fancy soaps and soft sheets, that’s all you’ll get out of an experience. A hotel can only do so much. But when you change your receptors to a more receiving frequency and visit a place vibrating on a different level, that’s when travel magic happens. Sometimes a great hotel can change the way you see yourself in the world. [Read the Full Story]( [Angling for the Big Fish That Breaks Hearts]( Angling for the Big Fish That Breaks Hearts It’s late afternoon when we emerge from our rest. We head down to the river and stand on a bank of small stones before a long pool where it’s easy to wade. Markley is above me, I fish below. The sun glares on the water’s surface so we don’t look for fish, they’re impossible to see. We cast hoppers and let them swing downstream. When they stop, we step down and do it again, covering a lot of water, like salmon fishing. Since we’ve seen the fish here and know their dimensions, this doesn’t feel like speculation. Cast and swing. Another cast, like many before, and the line swings by a half-submerged rock. There’s a short, sharp sound, like a vacuum, and the hopper disappears into the wide open mouth of a fish. I’m between mildly prepared and totally shocked. Instinctively, I raise the rod. A good set. “Yes!” Andres exclaims, dangerously premature. There’s so much to do. The trout, already downstream, heads farther down. Downstream is not where you want a large trout to be. He has the current with him. You can’t turn it back toward you. A lot can go wrong. 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