Productivity shame is a horrible curse. It’s that feeling of never doing enough. It doesn’t matter how much you work or how much time you spend working. You can cross everything off your to-do list but still be left feeling like you’ve done nothing at all. Sometimes I can finish a project or do some writing to alleviate the pain, but the balance is temporary and the feeling tends to persist regardless. Nothing I do seems to satisfy this urge.
What makes this worse is that you then get productivity guilt, or unproductivity guilt. This means when doing something you deem not-valuable, i.e. hobbies, Netflix, gaming, you feel like you could and should be doing more. This shame/guilt combo prevents you from being proud of actual accomplishments, disconnecting you from what you’re doing leading to unbearable amounts of stress. I’ve identified three key factors that cause me to suffer with this 21st century affliction:
- I link my self-worth to the things I’ve accomplished
- My goals are impossibly high
- My view of other people is skewed
That’s basically the summary of where this shame/guilt comes from, fuelled of course by social media. I also think I need to start seeing my own life outside of work as valuable. Everything I do has value to me as an individual living breathing thinking human being even if it doesn’t translate directly to a monetary figure. There are three solutions to my problem:
- Separate my self-worth from what I’ve accomplished. There will always be things for me to do, boxes to tick off an infinite list. If I derive my own value from my output then I’m setting myself up to be in a never-ending nightmare cycle of working non-stop and dealing with the consequences that inevitably follow; anxiety, panic, stress, burnout.
- Setting more realistic goals. I am not going to sell my business for £400 million. I will not be a billionaire. I’m not going to live in a 16-bedroom mansion in the country. I also don’t really want these things. What I can do is grow my business steadily. I can invest wisely in my future and enjoy my time on this planet by finding fulfilling hobbies and experiencing new things as often as possible whilst making the most of where I am now.
- Appreciate my own progress, and my own journey. I recently read some of my earlier blog posts and laughed a bit at how I used to write. I giggle at my early journal entries. I cringe at how I used to be. This is good, and healthy. It means I’ve grown and moved forwards in my journey. My early design work was a bit meh, but now I look at some of the projects I’ve worked on and I can’t believe that I actually did those things. That’s where my focus should be.
I suppose if we’re to get real about these feelings, they are in fact nothing more than a symptom of living under the warped capitalism that dominates our world today. We have to work to survive (some of us) and through work we get access to not only the things we need but also the things we want. Thus, working yields positive results, therefore we should work hard. When we are productive, we are useful for we generate value (intangible). Productivity leads to value, it is not value in itself, this is where the disruption comes from. Endless productivity, infinite growth, finite system, etc.
It’s been maybe a month, a little over. I can’t quite remember and the days are blurred together. I find myself thinking that if we hadn’t met, I’d be able to sleep peacefully at night. I wouldn’t be sitting here, day after day, thinking how happy I was. If we hadn’t met, I wouldn’t be the person I am today though, and I like who I am now. Good days and bad days. I’m allowed to have bad days where I miss you so relentlessly that I can’t even see straight. It’s okay for these emotions to come and go like the tide. No ocean rests still. I’m starting to have good days again, and it won’t be long before there are more good ones than bad.
I’m slowly learning that some people exist for you to just have a temporary moment with before they move on, and in accepting that you can find it much easier when your time is up. It’s about setting accurate expectations; the pain comes from unrealised ambitions that were never realistic in the first place. When we find out someone doesn’t want the same things as we do it can be crushing, but they don’t owe us nor anyone else anything, they’re on their own journey. We aren’t owed an explanation; sure, it might be nice but that’s not how life is. A moment should be just that, a moment, existing with nothing ahead of it and that should be fine. So unlike my last piece which was not very pleasant, this one feels a bit more hopeful.