What is Toxic Productivity (& How Can You Avoid It?)
Career Advice / August 22, 2022Table of Contents
Feeling anxious when you try to relax? Frustrated by to-do lists that are never complete? Listless and burned out, both at work and at home?
You may have fallen into the trap of toxic positivity.
This offshoot of workaholism and hustle culture can lead to a seemingly inescapable pull to do more—at the cost of rest and relationships.
What is Toxic Productivity?
Toxic productivity is a fixation on doing, contributing, and producing at all times.
While it usually starts as workaholism, it goes beyond the job and into one’s personal life. Those afflicted not only work long hours but also spend their free time in the constant pursuit of productivity.
They may pack their leisure hours with business books or podcasts, learning a new language, starting side hustles for money rather than enjoyment, or any number of “productive” activities.
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Why is Toxic Productivity a Bad Thing?
In today’s hustle culture-obsessed environment, it’s easy to get too much of a good thing.
When productivity becomes toxic, it can lead to some negative side effects. You may feel nagging anxiety when you try to relax—a pervasive sense that you should be doing something. You may experience a lack of fulfillment when you achieve a goal since there are always more goals to achieve. You could also suffer from guilt as your to-do list continues to grow, and you can’t seem to get it all done. Your personal relationships may also suffer, as spending time with friends and loved ones are pushed aside in your pursuit of accomplishment.
Paradoxically, this obsession with producing can make you less productive. Rest and downtime are essential to creating our best work. When you’re running on empty, it can take longer to produce the same results. Or you may be unable to produce those results at all.
This can trap you in a cycle—you feel you must devote more and more time to being productive, but the output gets worse. Eventually, you may burn out entirely.
How to Avoid Toxic Productivity
It doesn’t have to be this way! Use these tips to take the toxicity out of your productivity.
Set Healthy Boundaries
If you have trouble “turning off” after work, perhaps you need to set a firm boundary with your evening and weekend availability. That could mean you put your laptop away, and keep your cell phone in another room to keep yourself out of your inbox.
It can also mean learning how to say no, both in your work and personal life. Taking on more projects than you can handle is a surefire path to overwork. The church auction or PTA bake sale may need to find another organizer this year!
Schedule Downtime
Some of us tend to fill empty spaces on the calendar with more work. But if you schedule leisure into your day, you can avoid that nagging feeling that you “should” be doing something else. If 6:00pm to 7:30pm is scheduled for reading a novel or watching a favorite show, then you’re not slacking—you’re keeping to the schedule!
Be Realistic About What You Can Complete In A Day
Regardless of how much you want to accomplish, the fact is there are only so many work hours in the day. You can try to squeeze more work into your schedule through efficiencies and focus techniques, but no “hacks” will let you finish 12 hours of work in a 9-hour day.
Take an objective view of your schedule. If it normally takes two hours to prepare for a weekly meeting, don’t pretend you can do it in one. Also, leave yourself some buffer around tasks and meetings. If you pack every minute of your day with work, you leave no time for the inevitable bathroom breaks, snacks, or short stretch sessions—which can ultimately help you be more productive, not less.
Outsource What You Can
Is there any reason you have to be the one to place that supply order or start looking for a new freelance graphic designer? Are there any tasks that you can delete from your task list entirely, as they’re neither urgent nor important?
The same applies to your personal life. Could you order groceries for delivery, instead of spending an hour at the grocery store? Can you work with a personal trainer to create a shorter, more effective gym routine?
Remember—the point isn’t to free up your time for more work. It’s to free up your time for more relaxation, so you can recharge and bring your best self to your working hours!
Practice Doing Nothing
The increasingly frenetic pace of modern life has all but eradicated the skill of doing nothing. But you can get it back.
Next time you’re standing in a checkout line, resist the temptation to check your email or hop on social media. Just stand there. Yup. Wait and do nothing. Or set a timer for five minutes and lay on the floor. No podcast, no music. Or sit in the backyard and watch the trees blow in the breeze.
It will feel strange at first. But these brief moments of deliberate non-productivity can help to reset that pull to be constantly doing.
