JOYFUL productivity

Joyful Productivity is going through a profound transformation within my consciousness. I started, uh, in 2008 talking about joyful productivity, maybe 2009. Actually, back then I called it sustainable productivity, so you can kind of get a sense of how it started. You know, 2008, it was sustainable productivity. I— my first business name was Sustainable Productivity Consulting. That was my PO box when I had to register my PO box. That was my business name. Um, and so eventually, 2009, I think, I— 2010, some— I renamed it Joyful Productivity because, well, I like the sound of it. And also, I was trying to weave more like spirituality into how I looked at my work and business. And so really joyful, the joyful part of productivity. Um, a lot of people When I ask them, what do you think it means? And actually, I'd be curious if anyone wants to, those of you who are live here want to chat below. What do you think joyful productivity means? Comment below. I'm always curious, like what, how is it coming across to you even if you don't know anything else about it? So I've gotten a couple of live chats here. Thanks to those who are able to. Productivity from a place of joy rather than force. Good. Enjoying your work and feeling satisfied and happy with what you're getting done. Good. Lightheartedness within business. Yeah. To me, it feels light and empowering. So thank you all for the chats. So originally, I really thought of it to mean some kind of deep spiritual joy, even if I was in the depths of torture of some doing taxes or other tedious work, I could find the joy of the divine within the depths of my soul. And knowing that we are always forever connected, even in the depths of the valley of the shadow of death, there you are with me, O Lord. Kind of joy. And some of you are like, what the hell? It's not joy, that's just religiosity, or whatever it might be, right? But that's how I really saw joy, because My goodness, from 2000, whenever I started my business, 2009, until only more recently, it was mostly tedious work. My God. And maybe some of you are in there right now building a business and getting it to be financially sustainable. Heck, it is a lot of tedious work. It's a lot of work that you probably don't want to do if you had unlimited, you know, abundance and time and energy and Right? Like, or rather limited. We have limited time, but if you had unlimited abundance within that limited time, you wouldn't be doing, you know, a lot of the stuff you do in business. Come on, let's be honest. Right? So the joyful productivity was kind of like, funny enough, forcing myself to have lightness and joy in the midst of hell. I mean, not hell, but certainly purgatory, right? Purging our lack of discipline, purging our, inconsistency, purging our self-doubts, purging our smallness, purgatory, right? Like it was a very Catholic type of joy. I mean, you all didn't see that, but that's how I assumed joyful productivity was for the first, you know, until recently, for the first 15+ years, it was maybe not 15, maybe 12 years, something like that. Now publicly, whenever I said it, I didn't explain all this because no, who would want to sit with me if they're like this? You're a Catholic joyful productivity? What the hell? It's a lashing joy, kind of like a monk kind of, you know, saint type of joy, you know, Saint Francis poverty type of joy. Who wants? Nobody wants that except Catholics. So, but I kept that secret from you all these years. I'm sorry. You didn't know that, huh? I've written blog posts about this. I have written about how like deep fun is really more like deep St. Francis type of fun. Even the shadow of death kind of fun, valley of— only until recently. Okay. All right. Now what changed recently? Well, I mean, honestly, what changed is that it worked. Obviously, financially it worked. So the suffering worked, you know, financially it, it created abundance for me. It's true. But also it worked because I didn't really suffer those first 12 years. Like, I was able to find, in even in the most unskillful ways, I was able to tap into divine lightness and divine joy in the midst of doing taxes, for example, just naming the worst thing that most of us have to do at the computer, right, or something. Or in the midst of having failed launches again and again and again, in the midst of, oh my God, tech, what's this tech problem? I don't even know why this tech problem is happening, right? In the midst of solving problems, in the midst of, um, having to find an audience, in the midst of all that, I think renaming to myself joyful productivity, joyful product— did get me at least with some unskillfulness, but still tapping into the lightness and the joy. The discipline, joyful discipline. Discipline is not fun for most of us, obviously, but I was able to find some of that. Joy in the discipline, and therefore I was able to make it through, you know, longer than most people are as solopreneurs, right? So anyway, what changed recently? Financial abundance, one. But two, and I know many of you watching this are not yet in financial abundance, I hope and pray and believe that you will get there if it is your, um, path and your your purpose and your strong enough desire and work to get there. But even if you're not there, there's a second element that has allowed true joy, like the stuff you're talking about— lightness, happiness, enjoyment, not just religious joy, right? You know what that second element is? We now, all of us, have a cheap assistant that really can do so much of the tedious work that we used to have to do. I still remember, I'm not gonna mention her last name, but Karen, you know who you are. Could be any Karen. But Karen said to me years ago, George, how do you, I know I like your joyful productivity concept, but how do you deal with the work that grates at the soul? The work that grates at the soul. And my response to her was, suck it up, right? Because back then, that was what— that was my response. My response was, suck it up and learn to have God in your, in your, in your soul-grating work. Why did you incarnate here? Why did you decide to come to Earth? You decided to come to Earth as a soul gym. You don't go to a gym to like, oh my God, these weights are so much fun. No, you go to a gym because like, oh, I know I can do it, I know I can do it, come on. You know, God's gym, Gold's Gym, you know. And so I said, suck it up. I didn't say suck it up. I said, find joy in that soul-grading work. That's what we're here to do, right? That was my nice response. It's true. That's how I felt back then. And she hated the response. I mean, she didn't hate it, but she was like, oh God, okay, right? But now I can give Karen a different response. I can say, yeah, screw the soul-grading work. No, really, we are in the singularity and all of us have a cheap assistant. Well, $100 a month. Okay. You have to be willing to pay $100 a month for Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. It costs about $100 a month to have this kind of capability, but you can now outsource all of your soul grading work to AI. I no longer write my blog posts except I vision them. I, I, I vision the, the arc. I have the AI write it and then I edit it to my voice. That's true. I no longer create images. Haven't, haven't for a long time, right? I no longer schedule emails. Emails are all scheduled for me, like on the rhythm. I don't, it's, I've set up an AI to automate everything. I don't schedule emails. What do you, I don't click things anymore. I, I click as little as possible and I type as little as possible. Now you can also do it via voice now, right? Like literally soul grading work is now no longer necessary for any solopreneur. If you don't know how to do it yet, well, you need to learn how to do it. That's like the last tedious work. The last tedious work you ever need to learn how to do is how to use AI. The last and final tedious work any of us have to do. And when robots arrive, then even more so, the last tedious manual labor you ever have to do is to learn how to train the robot to wash your dishes and, and, you know, to clean your toilet and all that stuff, to cook your meals and all that. Do your caretaking elderly, right? My, my, my mom and dad sat me aside 2 years ago, like, looked me in the eye and on, because they want me to move, move to live with them, to take care, caretake for them. And they're like, who's going to take care of us when we're old? And I shouldn't have probably said this, not very obedient, but I said, robots will. I was serious. I'm like, in 5 years, robots will. But Thankfully my, my, my, my brothers live near them and so they're, they're taking care of them right now and I visit every 2 months. So anyway, but they're like, my mom still, George, we're still counting on you. You know, we're still counting on you to be the one to take care of us. You and you and Kim. It's okay. Okay. Kim, Kim is okay with that at some point. So anyway, long story short, joyful productivity has changed. It literally now is joyful, fun, light productivity. Because I no longer have patience for anything that's not that. I seriously, that's one of the capacities I've lost as a human thanks to AI or no thanks to AI. I've lost patience. I no longer have patience for the tedious. I, I really don't. I'm like, why the hell am I doing this at the computer? AI Claude, do, do this for me. Oh, got it. Okay, good. From now on, don't, I don't have to do that on Mondays anymore, right? No more. Oh, you've scheduled it. Great. Cool. Checks all my spam for any occasional client messages that need to be fished out. Clears my inbox, or I, I still clear my inbox. That's, that's true. I, I'm still kind of an inbox perfectionist, so I, I still do that. But Claude does so much, updates my website, updates my event on events on Simpler, everything. So joyful productivity is now coming into its own and I, declare and encourage all of you to tell yourself, I don't have to do this anymore. I don't have to do this anymore. Whatever, whatever shit you're, you're dealing with, you don't have to do it anymore. You outsource it. Don't do it yourself. You— we have— this is a new age in In the singularity, we are now humans who get to be humans and not like live like machines. Funny enough, the, the, the quote from Wendell Berry that says there will be in the future, there will be people who have to make a decision to live like creatures or live like machines. And people who are anti-AI would tell that to me and says, you're living like a machine. Like, no, you've got that opposite. I've learned to automate things so I can live like a creature and you're still living like a machine processing your own admin work. If you're not willing to use the robots and AI, you literally have to keep doing all the tedious work that really should be outsourced to the machines. So now what do I do? I get to play, I get to laugh more, I get to be with you. This still shouldn't be automated. Okay. Video calls should not be automated still. I get to do more visioning, more play, more exploration. So Joyful Productivity, welcome to the new era.