I read productivity blogs much in the same way a gay man reads Hustler. Usually with lots of squinting and repetition of that’s not even fucking practical until someone’s all, “You’re not welcome at this Gymboree anymore.” But mostly, not at all.

I started adding them to my Google Reader about two months ago. I said to myself, “Aubrey, this whole cake for breakfast thing isn’t really working out. Okay maybe it is. But you need something to blame your problems on this week and you already used Time Warner Cable last week, so it’ll have to be this.” With each RSS feed I added, I got more and more excited about my new life as someone who gets up early, ditches television and does yoga on the beach where I would live because I learned how to organize my workspace. How to manage my online reputation and 31 ways to get more comments on my blog? How could this go wrong?

This is what my reader looks like now:

There's not enough 'Mark all as read' in the world to fix this

I soon realized that the only thing being produced from these blogs was a thick, white ribbon of self-persuasion that these tips on how do things like “get up in the morning” and “put yogurt in the freezer to make frozen yogurt” were worth more than an indignant duh. But I did learn a few things. Chiefly that people who write productivity blogs are huge fans of bolding things and

1. Numbering

2. Stuff

It’s all they do. Because productive people don’t have time for paragraphs. Oh, and to make things even more productive, they’ll post a photo that is tangentially related to the subject matter. For instance, if I were writing an article (they’re largely referred to as articles because this is real Tony Kushner-grade work), about How To Quickly Switch To A Very Serious Looking Entrepreneurial Document To Hide That Photo Gallery Of Celebrity Feet Because Some Asshole Is Over Your Shoulder Taking A Picture Of You For His Productivity Blog, I’d use this:

Perfect. Then I’d quote Ralph Waldo Emerson or something.

There are also lots of questions involved in writing productivity blogs. See, it makes the auteur seem totally relatable. I also suspect that it motivates the reader to think which is essentially the limbic system of productivity. Don’t you agree? Craig Harper, in an article about “The Inspiration Tap,” writes:

Then there are times when I have no (immediate) plan to write anything but something happens and I have to stop what I’m doing and literally run to my computer. Sometimes, I feel like I’m sprinting with a glass full of milk trying desperately not to lose any of my milk (inspiration) as I run. Have you ever had an amazing idea or revelation and then lost it two minutes later? How frustrating is that?

Thankfully, even those of you who are less productive than you could be (non-humans) can understand this extended metaphor because good ole’ Craig writes in such a way that the scene just unfolds itself. Here we see the milk, which is actually the inspiration in disguise, and the protagonist (Craig) who is desperately trying not to spill it because how frustrating is that? This is some real Mulholland Dr. shit. And he’s sprinting which means that his home is large enough to afford such a glut of kinetic energy because he’s so fucking productive and inspirational.

Other bloggers take a different approach in that they give away free things that no one really wants anyway in order to boost their subscriber numbers and in turn, be “personally excellent.”

#1. Yell at the beach

And I’ll admit – I want to be personally excellent too. So I’m aping this method and giving away this cat I drew so people will be tricked into thinking that what I have to say is valuable. Because trickery is excellent.

SUBSCRIBE AND GET THIS PURPLE CAT

Now I just sit and wait. Like any prudent productive person would do.

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