I have an idea for a book, which would explore Batman’s time management. No, wait, stop, come back! Aren’t you curious about how the CEO of a major company can also fight crime at night while being obscenely buff? Is that even humanely possible (answer: probably not). Suspension of disbelief goes a long way.

It would go something like this: Each morning, Bruce Wayne wakes up at 11am. He works out for an hour before having a brunch meal served by his butler, Alfred. He then works as CEO from 1pm-9pm, with a brief break for dinner and other breaks for exercise too. From 9pm he dons his cape and cowl and goes on a crime-fighting rampage, until about 4am, when he returns home, does some sort of other workout as a cooldown, and goes to sleep (getting about 6 hours every night, which is not too bad for this lifestyle). The end.

Because really, what else is there to say? Batman is fictional, and we are all real people, who don’t have butlers to manage all of hour home affairs for us. We don’t have millions of dollars to throw at every minor problem, and we also don’t have the childhood trauma that Batman does (or perhaps I am speaking just about me here).

But I’ve noticed there is this trend to find the “ideal” productivity routine, like we are all monkeys on treadmills and our life is just to churn out creations non-stop. It’s a bizarre, factory-style approach to creative work which just doesn’t really click. Richard Feynman would get the idea for his Nobel Prize-winning physics research by being at dinner and watching a student throw a plate up in the air. He wasn’t working in the traditional sense – but his skill was in observing the experiences and world around him and recognising how that could impact his research. If Feynman had instead spent that night staying at the office late, just trying to churn out papers and equations, he wouldn’t have gotten the idea for his research. Only by not working was he, in fact, able to come up with his best ideas.

Productivity YouTube is a real problem space for this. You find videos recommending the best tools for note-taking, project management, and managing time. There are also numerous books on the subject, on how to manage every possible moment of your life you can imagine. We live in a world endlessly populated with information on the best way to do something: the best time management skills, the best daily schedule, the best morning routine, the best way to eek an extra five minutes out of our every day, the best gadgets for improving our life, and so on. The other day I even saw a “minimalist carry” video, supposedly the presenter was aiming to cut out the amount of stuff he carried around in his life. He had a tote bag filled with all sorts of stuff, when I carry less in my pockets every day.

We are surrounded by potential information overload, with how much is surrounding us. I’ve taken conscious steps to reduce how much information I can access. Web browsers on my phone are now blocked for the entirety of the day: the idea is, if I want to try something, I have to actually do it, rather than Google to see if someone else has already done it and what they thought about it. I want to live a life shaped by myself, not one that is shaped by random strangers on the Internet. I used to read reviews about everything, and read the comments on sites about movies coming out. Now, I try to avoid all of that. I don’t know how the recent films I’ve seen have been received online: I have my own thoughts on them, and I talk about them with friends. That’s enough for me.

Do you want Batman’s time management routine? You’ll need millions of dollars and a butler, but you can achieve it, at the cost of your mental health, your eventual physical health, ending up alone as the world moves on around you. Or, you can try to do your best every day and try to be healthy, engage with your friends, and have a healthy relationship with work.

The choice is ours.