I Audited a Stressed College Student’s Calendar for 4 Hours. This Is Why Modern Productivity is Broken.
I Audited a Stressed College Student’s Calendar for 4 Hours. This Is Why Modern Productivity is Broken. L ast week, I spent four hours staring at a laptop screen with Sarah. Sarah is a junior majoring in Biochemistry. Between a grueling course load, a part-time job at a campus coffee shop, and trying to maintain a normal social life, she was running on empty. When she logged onto our Zoom call, the dark circles under her eyes said everything. She showed me her Google Calendar. It was packed. Every single square inch of her day was color-coded and filled to the brim. “I don’t understand,” Sarah whispered, visibly frustrated. “I plan everything down to the minute on Sunday night. But by Wednesday afternoon, the whole thing falls apart. I’m constantly behind, I’m sleeping four hours a night, and I feel like a failure.” Sarah didn’t have a motivation problem. She was working herself to the bone. What Sarah had was an architecture problem . We shut down her scheduling apps, grabbed a blank...
