Winston Churchill had this notion of “wilderness years,” where a politician is out of power and irrelevant but nevertheless survives, grapples with fundamental questions, and emerges on a larger stage than before. Involutionary productivity feels like “wildless” years, in a way.
Involutionary productivity is being highly productive while mostly being a reclusive shut-in in your pajamas on a couch with an iPad. The basic presumption among older GenX and Boomer pearl-clutching analysts as well as some anxious younger people, that involution (hikkikomori, laying flat, quiet quitting…) is necessarily synonymous with low productivity or economic dropping-out is false.