Why are humans so unproductive by nature?

Hey, speak for yourself. In the last five days, I’ve gone on 5 hikes, explored two new sections of coastline that I’ve never been to, drove down a squigly one lane road with two way traffic, found a neat used book store and one that sells antique maps from the 1800s, visited two museums, walked the streets of a town I’ve never spent time in, clocked some hours at the beach and a pool, finished a book, and went whale watching.

Okay, okay. I admit it. I am a great procrastinator sometimes. There are just some things I don’t like to do. So I put them off. I find that I need to truly be in the mood to do something to really get it done efficiently. When the mood strikes, things get banged out. If I’m not feeling it, I can drag it on for eternities. I like to just go with the flow and do things when I feel like doing them. That’s why I hated working an 8 to 5 desk job so much.

What exactly are you asking? If humans are the least productive animal? Or is people are unproductive in teams?
Because both are those are incorrect

I’m really not sure how we’d be where we are today as a society… if we were all so lazy.

I read an article in one paper which suggested that we humans of the modern age, are becoming more reliant on the press of a button, they were blaming technology for leading us to expect most things “at the press of a button” & not doing enough for ourselves. I think it was to do with gardening or something, growing your own that sort of thing, basically saying we are losing the skills of the yesteryears & becoming far too lazy in general… Some thing like that!? :-/

I don’t really think that’s true.

What you are describing is not “unproductivity” but a lack of self-discipline, and placing a high value on amusement. Being unproductive is more making an effort but not having any results come from it.

It is only relative to the idealised state of being, which the establishment encourages us to strive towards.
That of the worker ant.

We wouldn’t be considered unproductive, if the most powerful forces in the world were not constantly trying to bully us into working away our life and spirit, to further their ends and reinforce their positions of power.

People work together to achieve what they have to, to survive, and spend the rest of the time socialising and enjoying themselves.

The establishment has constructed society, to ensure that “survival” equates to “corporate profit”, so as to exploit the natural desire to survive. On top of that, consumer culture has equated “socialising and enjoyment” to “corporate profits”, to exploit that human tendency also.

With a more co-operative, and less exploitative, society, people would spend a lot less time working to survive, and a lot more time socialising and enjoying themselves, in the way nature intended.

This is not “unproductive”, it is beautiful.

N.B. I feel that communism is impractical for biological reasons. What is needed is responsible and socially-conscious government, but this cannot occur in a society with democracy, in a world with the USA.

This is definitely not true for everyone. There used to a saying in a U.S. Army advertisement that said, “We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day” and this was and still is true in a lot of cases for me and others in the military. We often fit as much as we can into a duty day if we’re training or preparing for a deployment (like we are right now) or working regular shifts in our career fields.

Of course, our environment and schedule is pretty rigid in the military so I don’t know if that is the ideal example but for me personally, I apply my work ethic to my personal life too in that I’m very punctual in taking care of things I need to do right away rarely procrastinating on anything. I just feel much better knowing that I don’t have things hanging over my head or waiting to be done if they can be accomplished now. I credit this to self-discipline that I’ve learned and applied after more than two decades in the military.

I credit it to being brainwashed by authority, to serve their interests in the most efficient manner possible, no disrespect to your personal achievements and skills, quite the contrary.

You need to get out more…out here in my world I am surrounded by very busy, quite productive people. It could be you prefer a slower pace and simply surrounded yourself with likewise minded people.

We work so much more than humans ever did in the past. 40, 50, 60, 80 hours a week and sometimes more. In the 13th and 14th centuries, according to Wikipedia, peasants were only working around 1500 hours per year. In the US, recently, the average worker worked almost 2000 hours per year. In the years of the industrial revolution, it was even worse—in 1850 in the US some workers worked as much as 3600 hours per year or more.

The industrial economy basically sucked for people. Most humans were doing what we have machines to do now. Most of our work now takes place in our brains. There’s a lot of creative work—inventing things and improving things. I’m afraid you can’t see what is going on inside people’s brains, so you don’t know if they are being productive or not. Personally, I don’t mind at all if my employees day dream. I think speculative time is important, and I don’t care if they are looking for party favors for their child’s birthday party. You never know what will turn out to be useful in work.

Of course, all this begs the question of what productivity means. A lot of people think it means focusing on what you are “supposed” to be doing. Studying. Nose to the grindstone. Every our at work doing the assigned work.

I would argue that that’s probably the least productive way to do things. It is the people as procrastinator view. I.e., you don’t trust people. When you don’t trust people to get things done, then they don’t get them done. Work, like learning, has to be intrinsically motivated or its worth a whole lot less.

Here’s another thing. Why do we have to get things done by a certain date? Is the planet going to fall apart if the bridge doesn’t get built this year? More likely it will fall apart if the bridge does get built sooner. Yeah, it’s more convenient, but this is the view of a people who can’t see what’s in front of them; who can’t be themselves. They are only as good as the next thing they do. That’s a sucky way to live life. Believe me. I know. That’s how I feel every day of my life.

On average humans are productive by nature. We are the descendants of survivors otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Modern todo lists can be overwhelming. Attention grabbers are omnipresent. Prehistoric humans had to focus on 2–3 things. And they didn’t have a grocery store. Finding food was a priority.

@mattbrowne Nor did they have the ever distracting internet.

@clarice – The Internet can be a productivity tool and a distraction. We can learn to use it in moderation. Welcome to Fluther, by the way!

Oh yeah, so unproductive. Compare 1900 to 1999. Yeah, next to nothing happened in that century…

If you don’t have to exert yourself much to obtain food, clothing, and shelter, you may well become unproductive. If sheer survival is your main focus, chances are good you’ll hustle, and you’ll also learn the virtue of collaboration and the power of teamwork.

It’s all in the buttons!! I knew it!! :-/

I certainly do not accept your premise. While every other species opn earth looks after simply feeding itself, finding mates and producing young, humans have developed language, tools, art, society, science and so much more. We’ve built giant cities. While we are relatively slow on the ground, poor swimmers and incapable of flight we can move through any of those mediums at many times the speed of the fastest other animals on earth.

We’ve explored the moon and sent robots to other planets and beyond, into outer space. I think with all our productivity, you could more easily make an argument we have over exploited nature rather than been too lazy.

Onestly its probably cause were so much smarter(Ironicaly) than other mamals. We have learned to live our lives at the bare minumum.