Toxic productivity has got me by the throat
I felt guilty for resting – so I wrote a newsletter.
An audio version of this article is available below (narrated by moi):
I’m alive! (Just.) Huge apologies for dropping off the grid over the last few weeks and leaving you without a new Just One More Thing article. I know you’ve all been frantically refreshing your email feeds and feeling bereft. I left you wandering alone in a content desert and for that I am truly sorry. But there is a good reason for it.
I’m smack-bang in the middle of work madness. I have several regular gigs and all of them are reaching fever pitches of busyness right now, exactly at the same time. I am working six days a week with regular 10-12 hour shifts and am also commuting to the UK from Amsterdam fairly often.
I knew this was coming – I was aware of this clash of schedules for months – and yet it has still managed to strike me as a surprise. “What is this chaos?” I ask helplessly, wandering around my flat and Heathrow airport, dishevelled as a disaster survivor, post-it notes stuck to my shoes.
And so, until now, there has been no time to pen a newsletter. Each post takes me about a day to write, research and edit – and then re-write, re-research and re-edit when I realise the first version is shit. It’s time spent doing something I love – I am so delighted that I finally worked up the courage to launch this – but, unfortunately, my bills demand that I prioritise paying work which means that any creative personal projects inevitably fall behind.
But something else is going on too. When I do get time off at the moment, I feel guilty about it. As guilty as if I stole your nan’s monogrammed hanky or sneezed in her soup. And this guilt is adding to the pressure and exhaustion I feel, which, in turn, is leading to a kind of creative paralysis.
But why on earth do I feel guilty taking time off when I can?
The guilt of not constantly doing
I feel guilty for watching Criminal Minds, for having a bath, for reading a book, for lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. Despite the fact that I currently look and feel like one of those deranged women on a yoghurt advert – smiling wildly like I’m trapped inside my own body – I still can’t shake the feeling that I should be constantly doing. I have ‘resting guilt face’.
This is not a new phenomenon for me. When I went travelling in 2018, one of the only times I felt truly peaceful and could properly switch off was when riding the railways in Sri Lanka. I went back and forth along those routes – some of the most beautiful in the world – for days. It worked for me because I was technically doing: I was travelling (tick!) and seeing sights (tick!), even though in reality I was just sitting and staring. It’s one of the reasons I love driving so much. Even if I’m literally driving in circles, my mind accepts that I’m achieving because ‘I am driving’.
If I happen to have a quiet Wednesday scheduled in, will I take a leisurely walk in the park, visit some museums, watch a great film, or otherwise enjoy my day? NO! I will berate myself for not learning Dutch, not starting a side-hustle, not learning how to macrame, or not writing my future Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. I may get as far as putting the TV on, but will spend the whole show comparing myself to some random on Instagram. (Don’t even get me started on LinkedIn.)
Much of this can be chalked up to freelance anxiety. I have been freelance since I was 26, which was oh, a couple of years ago (quiet in the back), and there is nothing quite like the terror of realising you have no work booked in and rent to pay. The Freelance Fear is always lurking because you alone are wholly responsible for every opportunity missed.
But work’s good at the moment, so…? And anyway, that doesn’t explain the guilt. I feel guilty for enjoying my life. Where has this come from and what the hell can be done about it?
Toxic productivity has got me by the throat. The bastard.
According to Anika Petrella, a psychologist and research associate at the University College of London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (try saying that after a gin), toxic productivity is “an unhealthy preoccupation with constant productivity, at the expense of wellbeing,” or the “need to continuously and exponentially maximise productivity”.
Symptoms can include overcommitting at work, prioritising goal-directed activities, turning down social events or neglecting self-care routines, feeling guilty (hi!) for ‘doing nothing’ (with resting categorised as such). All of which can turn into procrastination as it’s all just too much so why bother with any of it?
We live in a success-oriented society with ‘success’ very much predicated upon work and productivity. If I were going to be super cynical about it (which I am), I would chalk this up to generations of money-makers and fat cats at the top of the food chain needing us plebs to work work work to feed their greed. A culture has therefore been created – particularly in the UK – where competitive productivity and ‘presenteeism’ is valued to the detriment of success in other areas of life. Social media has definitely played a part in emphasising this belief system, with our peers' achievements literally credit-reeled into our brains every minute of every day.
(The different work cultures in the UK and the Netherlands is something I’m definitely going to explore in another post, but suffice to say, many Dutch people think the British perspective – or lack thereof – on work/life balance is horrendous.)
Is it any wonder that so many of us feel anxious and guilty for taking time off and that burnout is on the rise across the board? A trend that’s only going to be exacerbated by the cost of living crisis when resting will become a luxury people literally can’t afford.
And Just One More Thing…
Brilliantly, I have written a book called This Book Will Make You Successful and, yes, am aware of the potential irony here. However, in this book I go to pains to stress that we absolutely shouldn’t define success through a narrow lens of achievement. We must expand acceptability around how we think of goals, particularly in a world as unstable as the one we currently inhabit. The pandemic inspired ‘The Great Resignation’ – when thousands of people quit their jobs citing burnout – and yet, I feel like we’re ramping up to the same levels of expectation surrounding productivity again in all areas of life.
So, what to do about it? Right now, I’m trying to investigate what it means for me – why can’t I chill out and enjoy lying on the floor? How can I convince my mind that the guilt I feel is nonsense? I’ll let you know how I get on. Which is the perfect segue to say that this newsletter may have to become biweekly or even triweekly (if that’s a thing) for a while. Apologies in advance, but I must rest. I’ll try not to feel guilty about it – and I really hope you’ll stick with me.
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