Is Productivity to blame?

What could the economic downturn be telling us.
Everyone has their own perception of the economic downturn. In most cases, the same individual may hold multiple perspectives. I too have a few perspectives about this recession.

Today I will write about one of my such thoughts. I can't help feeling that one of the leading factors that lead to this downturn is our increasing productivity. The thought of an empty To do list dreadens me. At office, I find myself spending a lot of time doing other things because if I spend all my time working on "real work", I would be done in half a day. This is probably because it takes lesser time for me to do stuff than it used to take a few years ago.

On the other hand, I get paid more to do the same work than I used to be paid a few years. A lot more. If I extrapolate this to other people and other sectors in the economy, it could mean that people were being paid more for doing less work. Where does this lead us?

I think, may be I don't need to sit in the office for eight to nine hours. Maybe if I just came to office for six hours, I would be able to leave as well. Where do I spend the additional time. If I spend time to upgrade my skills, I would be paid even more to do even less. This in my mind is the cause of the inflationary economy. Since not everyone is benefiting equally from this productivity increase, there would be others who are going the other way. Getting paid less and less to do more and more work. I am sure there are many others in my predicament.

How do we spend our time so that it keeps us busy without leading to inflation? Maybe get out of the money economy for a while and spend time working in the non-money or re-wiring the economy to reduce external costs to environment and society.