Being prolific will probably* cure** your depression***

Should we start a support group for notebook hoarders?

ICYMI, we launched the SPACIES Desk Pad. We’re getting dangerously low on stock, but we have some new products coming soon. You can snag your SPACIES Desk Pad here →

And today, we’re unpacking the meaning of a particularly sneaky line in the SPACIES Manifesto…

I swear to god, Unblemished Notebook Hoarder Syndrome should be in the DSM.

(Just kidding, the DSM can kick rocks in open-toed sandals, disrespectfully!)

In Agile Project Management, project managers duel with bloated and inefficient workflows by focusing on “maximizing the work not done.”

My notebook problem is like the Wario version of Agile’s mantra — I’ve maximized the amount of words gone unwritten, maximized ideas not explored, maximized work not done because I couldn’t bear to mar one of my [golum voice] ✨precious✨ bespoke journals.

It’s remarkably dumb. Stupid even, to hoard notebooks and never use them. I realize this.

But perfectionism is sneaky bunghole like that; it scooches sideways into your life, cutting off your well-intentioned momentum at the last moment and seemingly out of nowhere.

Perfectionism tells me I couldn’t possibly have a good idea without first procuring a luxurious unlined Japanese journal in a rare (but ideal) A3 size. Then when I finally smooth my hand over the first page, pen hovering in anticipation, that ass bag whispers,

“Don’t ruin this gorgeouise riche notebook with your idiotic idea for a gothic romance novel set in Quebec during the French and Indian War narrated by a family of foxes.”

If you learned the way to keep yourself safe is by being perfect, it’s tempting to continue to hoard stacks of pristine, empty notebooks in a corner of your room forever.

But you know how this goes — creativity and art and basically everything good in this fascinating petri dish of a planet is fundamentally at odds with the notion of perfectionism.

My personal factory setting is “knee-buckling perfectionism” across every category. Very unfortunate, because it means to get literally anything done I have to remind myself on a loop to focus on being prolific versus being perfect¹.

WARNING: It’s easy to mistake being productive for being prolific.

Prolificacy and productivity are tactics that might lead to similar outcomes, but damn do they taste different on your tongue.

In the SPACIES Manifesto, we have a line item that (smugly) says, “Productivity is the Shiny Object, creativity is the real gold.”

The Universal Laws of SPACIES

I’ll spare you a treatise on a concept as stomach-lurchingly rickety as productivity culture (think about it for longer than 12 seconds and you’re like, what are we optimizing for? why? to what end??? the ennui is staggering), but it’s safe to say that we battle our own get-things-done demons constantly at SPACIES HQ.

Like most creative people:

• ✅ we want to make things

• ✅ we want to do good work

• ✅ and we want to be acknowledged it

Ah, so simple. But so, so not easy.

When we wrote our manifesto — mostly as a gentle call in for ourselves — it was important to have a constant reminder that the goal isn’t to be productive or perfect. And listen, we’re in total agreement about the full body tingle of satisfaction one gets when one checks off a long-suffering task on a to-do list is one of life’s greatest pleasures. (That… rocks.)

But too often productivity is the flame to perfectionism’s moth. The Ben to perfectionism’s JLo! They know they’re no good together, but they just can’t keep away for long. [Segue Moment: I’m gunning for Bennifer Round 3… maybe in 2028? Send your thoughts and prayers, please.]

Perfectionism coupled with productivity is sort of a vile combo if you actually want to get any meaningful work done. Putrid, really.

If you want to wash the baseboards of your whole house, great! Hire this dynamic duo.

Trying to do anything with a modicum of depth? Good luck, babe.

Part of the reason I designed the SPACIES Desk Pad as is was to create protective bumpers for myself; I wanted to prevent myself from committing tiny acts of unconscious perfectionism. Death by ten million cuts, if you will.

I needed a supremely usable, beautiful, non-precious giant notepad to hold my ideas.

Something that I felt OK about settling my cup of coffee on. Or sketching out an objectively dumb idea upon. A tool that made me excited to use it that I couldn’t wait to break it in.

It’s my version of a cure for Unblemished Notebook Hoarder Syndrome, which in turn reminds me to prioritize my prolific nature over my desire to be productive.

Productivity cares about the quantity of tasks completed — hard things, easy things, they’re all equal in the eyes of productivity. That’s why when we focus solely on being productive we find ourselves spending most of our days on superficial tasks versus tasks that truly progress your life’s path. Spend too many days like that, and you’ll look back behind you with bleary eyes wondering what you spent your time on.

To be prolific means to care about the number of experiments attempted. My ballet teacher James Martin would encourage us to ask, “What is this?” as we completed a developpé for the 1304th time, as we tombéd through an adagio. It always made me laugh, but it was so profound to think of each step as a movement experiment instead of a position to be mastered.

Experimenters and productive perfectionists both probably show up to the studio every day to do their work. But the approach is different. Experimenters are in it to find the truth. Productive perfectionists are just going through the motions because it’s what they’re supposed to do.

They might ultimately both be successful… but which one is more likely to have fun?

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1. One of my favorite ways to defang perfectionism is to instead pronounce it “poi-fectionism” or “poi-fect” a la Bugs Bunny.