Being productive is a state where you want to do things efficiently and your intention is to get back return such as skill development, network, payroll and other form in the future. However, sometimes things are just getting exaggerated and yes it turns out that you feel exhausted and often, feel burn out.
“ Toxic productivity is an obsession to do self development and they will feel guilty if they do not do a lot of stuff.” — Dr. Julie Smith
Toxic productivity occur from the culture of idolize productivity. We often amazed of person who has a lot of different activity in their daily and someone who can stay up all night doing their task or work. Through this culture, we are pushed to be one of them. Actually, there is nothing wrong with the willing to be productive as long as we know the boundary. The productivity itself started to be toxic when we override our primary needs such as consumption, socialize, sleep, and entertainment. If we have the guilty feeling when we take a break or getting some nap or maybe doing what we enjoy to do where we think that the activity we are doing is not productive at all, then yes the productivity is toxic.
In a glance, toxic productivity is similar to workaholic and hustle culture. However, three of them is different. workaholic is someone who loves to work exceeds the working hour while hustle culture is a believe that the most important aspect in life is to work hard/hustling.
Here are some characteristics of person who is on the toxic productivity stage :
- Obsession to be productive
Working too much that harm their health and also their relationship with others. People will feel guilty when they are not doing anything for 1 to 2 hours and they will started to blame themselves. They will also find a hard time to take a rest and a break due to the guilty pressure. Naturally, all human being need entertainment, food, sleep and rest so that they can maintain the work-life balance.
2. Unrealistic expectation for self
Commonly, toxic productivity cause us to not able to adapt with changes because we have set a high standard to pursue our dreams. Having a targeted goals is good and helpful. However, the goal should be SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Timeliness). The goal should be realistic. It does not mean that we should kill our dream or prohibition to dream big but we can start with making smaller dream and achieving the smaller one that will help in achieving bigger fish! We all have the same 24 hours in a day means, we are not able to do a lot of stressing task in a day! try to divide the task (especially the more complicated one) into several portion and try to ticking the goals’ check box for each small progress that we made everyday. The point is not the quantity of task which is important, but the quality is.
3. Never feel satisfied
They will never feel satisfied with the amount of work that they have done , the amount of chapter that they have learned or whatever progress they have done that day. It is bad for your mental health and also pyhsical health. The dissatisfaction occurence could leads to stress and desperation because always feeling not enough. The feeling of dissatisfied could happen because of the willing to prove to others that they could settle any life problems. some also might feel this way because they can not respect the process. In processing we can not see the instant or direct result because it takes time for the process to give the expected result. While the cast majority loves instant gratification and they want to get rich quick which often lead them to do extreme stuff.
I, personally have ever been in this state where I think it is an obligation that I set for myself to always do stuff and settling task. The guilty feeling is always popping out when I am about to take a rest when I am feeling exhausted or some sickness come out. I talk to different friends, asking their productivity and burn out experience. I still remember at that moment I feel like a robot and can not enjoy the moment in life while the mind is still thinking of work or learning that should be done when I am on vacation or having a small entertainment. Burn out has been part of my daily snack and I need to face them everyday. Just after an incident hit me up and make me realize that I am actually torturing myself. The reason of my toxic productivity is the social media. Yes, this is also the reason why I do social media detox for months. I keep comparing my own achievement to others in instagram, seeing how 20 years old can have such an amazing life.
Realizing what I have done that lead to toxic, I started to find videos , quotes and also practicing mindfulness. It helps me being more stable both emotionally and in my mental condition. I have also started in building new positive habit, inspired from my role model such as morning journaling, meditation, and planner. By having my outline of time that guide me on what to do during that day, things are getting neater and I have more direction of what to do in certain moment rather than just hitting to every task that popping in my mind. One quotes that I always tell myself when I am about comparing myself to others is:
Life is not a competition with others. Life is a competition with yourself to do personal best each day — Cameron C. Taylor
Stay productive, See ya!
