Hold on a second before you scurry back to work. Do you have toxic productivity?
Table of Contents
What is toxic productivity?
Toxic productivity is the obsessive need to improve yourself and be more productive at all times.
When others are fine with the amount of work they’ve done today, you’re not nearly as satisfied.
You’d work all day trying to squeeze out all the time you could into your work.
You don’t allow yourself any time to rest, reflect, or appreciate how far you’ve come.
It’s almost as if you’re on a wheel and you can’t stop otherwise you’ll die. Which is far from the case.
A person with toxic productivity finds it difficult to stop working and may feel a sense of guilt if they do so.
Signs of toxic productivity
- You are never satisfied with the amount of work you’ve done for the day or for the week
- You want to give it 120% all the time
- Your productivity comes at the expense of other things such as hygiene, health, sleep, mealtime, etc
- You feel like you’re wasting your time for any moment that you aren’t working
- You set unrealistic expectations for yourself and your work
Toxic productivity may look different in everyone but the idea is the same: being productive while ignoring other essential needs for yourself regarding health (physical or mental), your relationship with others, sleep, hygiene, and more.
Why is toxic productivity bad?
Toxic productivity is bad because of the following reasons:
- You may neglect to take proper care of yourself and your appearance (not showering, not brushing hair, not brushing teeth, etc)
- Your sleep schedule may suffer (odd sleeping pattern or too few hours of sleep)
- Your mental health may suffer when you set unrealistic expectations that you can’t reach
- Your confidence and self-esteem may shatter when you realized you can’t get as much done as you thought
- Your relationship with your family and friends may suffer as you take precedence to work before them
- You may not be able to enjoy doing ‘nothing’
- Inability to slow down and enjoy life. Everything goes by in a rush because you’re working all the time
- Inability to appreciate your hard work because you’re too busy moving on to the next step
How to prevent and deal with toxic productivity
Here’s how you can prevent and deal with toxic productivity:
1. Schedule time for unapologetic breaks
You should schedule a time where you take a break without feeling guilty.
For instance, you can schedule a period of time between 10 pm to 11 pm where you wind down before you head to bed.
During your break, you can do whatever you want but it must not involve your work.
Taking some time to enjoy doing what you want to do without feeling guilty can help you avoid toxic productivity.
2. Sleep on time and sleep well
You should aim to sleep well and sleep on time.
Sleeping is important. It not only is a time where your body removes toxic waste out of your brain but it also helps in strengthening your memory as well as recharging you so that you can get up and be more productive the next day.
Sometimes people may sacrifice sleep for something else such as work because let’s face it, not all working hour in the day is equal.
Some hours in the day are just quieter and thus you’d be more productive.
I’m guilty of it too but we must learn to take care of our bodies better if we want to be here for the long haul.
It’s okay to be a bit less productive if it means that you could have a healthier living style.
3. Have a self-care day once in a while
Taking an entire day off to self-care can be a good idea as well.
You can do the following on your self-care day:
- Go to a spa
- Go get your hair done or your nail done
- Go take a bubble bath
- Go play some light music
- Cook something delicious
- Go do whatever you want (game, painting, running, etc)
- Absolutely no work
You must remind yourself to not work at all during that self-care day. Turn off your phone if you have to.
Tell your friends and family to not disturb you on that day because you are having a self-care day.
4. Learn to look at what you’ve accomplished every day with a sense of pride and gratitude
It can be easy to just move on to the next step without stopping and enjoying what we’ve accomplished for the day.
You should always look back at your progress at the end of the day and feel a sense of well-deserved pride and gratitude.
Stopping to appreciate your performance can give you the motivation to keep going and help you take a realistic stance on how things are going for you so you aren’t just mindlessly moving on to the next thing on the list.
5. Go outside and enjoy the sunshine a bit
A lack of sunshine is the reason for many’s depression. We need to be exposed to sunlight to create vitamin D in our bodies so go out and enjoy the sun a bit.
Of course, put on some sunscreen to protect yourself from the UV rays.
Staying couped out inside all day is nothing good for your mental health or your physical health.
6. Go out and catch up with some friends
Go out with some friends once a while away from your work can remind you that you got a life outside of your work.
Sure, your work may be important but so is everything else.
One of the biggest regret old people have in life is to let certain friendships fizzle out because everyone is so busy.
Go out and catch up with some friends once in a while so you don’t let that happen to you.
7. Turn off your phone and leave it in another room before you go to sleep
It’s vital that you turn off your phone and leave it in another room before you sleep because a lot of us have the habit of checking our phone once in a while when it is within reach.
You may feel compelled to keep checking.
“Oh, what are they doing?”
“Did they say anything about me?”
“Who liked my pictures?”
You cannot give your brain a proper rest if you allow your phone to distract you.
That constant dose of dopamine rush can easily make you addicted to your phone.
The screen also disrupts the production of melatonin which prevent you from feeling sleepy when it’s time to sleep.
8. Don’t be a perfectionist
I have an entire article right here on how you can stop being a perfectionist, check it out here.
Don’t be a perfectionist because being a perfectionist is the quickest way to burn out and/or develop toxic productivity.
You may think that you always need to be doing something causing you to not take proper rest.
As you know, human bodies can’t function without rest for a long duration of time so it’s inevitable that your mental and physical health will suffer as a result.
You don’t have to do everything perfectly. Sometimes there’s such a thing called ‘enough’ and I know you may not think so but it really is.
9. Set more realistic goals for the day
If you set unrealistic goals for the day you’d always have to be working all the time which can be very harmful to your physical health.
You’d have to work from morning to dawn to get everything you want to be done.
I don’t typically watch lifestyle vlogs but when I did, I’d be surprised by how little they did for the day. They seemed satisfied by the amount of work as well.
I’d jam-packed my day with things to do and spend all day working on it without break. I’d quickly feel burned out and wonder how other people can manage to get everything they planned for the day.
The secret?
Well, they just schedule a lot fewer things on their plates! So they get to finish what they set out to do that day and feel accomplished as a result.
If you struggle to get through your to-do list, perhaps it wasn’t because you weren’t productive enough or that you weren’t doing things fast enough. Perhaps it was because you got too many things on your list.
Cut down on your list if you want to avoid toxic productivity.
10. Know that you don’t have to be working all the time to be productive
A lot of us when thinking of “productivity” picture a person sitting in front of a computer all day doing ‘work’.
Maybe there are times in between for a meeting or a quick grocery trip but hold on a second, that isn’t what productivity is.
Productivity isn’t working all day without break. Productivity should involve the time you need to rest and recharge so you can carry on.
You don’t have to be working all the time to be considered productive. In fact, doing so would only exacerbate you and make you take a longer break in order to recuperate.
Final thought
Here we are, at the end of the article.
Tell me, do you have toxic productivity? Do you feel the need to be working and working non-stop?
I certainly feel that way quite a bit. I have so much planned for every day that it simply isn’t possible for me to take a long break or do much else.
But it’s so important that we recognize what is going on so we can prevent further toxic productivity.
Cheers!
