It’s a whole new world, thanks to COVID. To cope, our minds have grappled, adapted, and even overreacted to the way things are now.
For example, perhaps you’ve developed an unhealthy need to not only do more but be more right now. All of this “downtime” may have been unnerving. Do you find that you feel guilty, uneasy, and ashamed when you are idle? Do you feel a need to be working on something all of the time?
From your increasing job responsibilities to your less than sparkling counters, you may experience a sense of judgment and failure. Feeling as though you lack the discipline, hustle, or imagination to capitalize on the time at home, you may be tough on yourself in ways that do more harm than good.
Social neuroscientists call this response to a crisis “toxic productivity.” A cousin to workaholism, toxic productivity can be just as extreme and pretty unforgiving. If you feel deep and persistent pressure to do more, accomplish more, and produce more, you are likely wrestling with this obsession.
Toxic Productivity is Occupationally Counterproductive
Think about it. Have you given in to the temptation to get ahead or impress others by skipping lunch, working into the wee hours of the morning, or forgoing weekends so often that these behaviors became patterns? In your mind, do these behaviors feel like the keys to success? Are you nervous, upset, and distracted when you are doing other things and can’t get back to work? Toxic productivity is tricky. It feels like a virtue at first but soon becomes a trap. Worse, we feed it with external validation that keeps us on a perpetual hamster wheel.
Since the pandemic, many of us have congratulated each other for working so diligently while avoiding our COVID fears. Essentially, we’ve lauded the ability to do more and more while suffering greatly. In a world where the economy is suffering, others have no work at all, and stresses are mounting, productivity and the resulting recognition feel reassuring. However, if you can’t draw the line between working towards actual goals and working to support your own self-worth, emotional trouble lies ahead.
Is Your Online Life Contributing to Toxic Productivity?
Social media was pervasive and even intrusive for many people before the pandemic. People wrestled with the tendency to reveal only glossy, sanitized highlight reels of their lives in posts and photos. It’s no wonder then, that social media factors into toxic productivity too. Online, we used to be afraid of missing out on what was going on in the world. So, we crafted posts to show how fun and interesting our lives were socially. But when we became instantly isolated our posts became more of a lifeline. Our work and personal growth became the measures by which we compared ourselves.
Fears of seeming less than okay, unproductive, or unable to rise to the challenge emerged. Many compensated with toxic productivity. Perhaps you felt more and more compelled to learn a language, knit a blanket, and bake fresh bread in addition to working and schooling at home.
Toxic Productivity Drains Our Brains
Looking back, how many times did you feel pressured by another person’s growth or accomplishments during the pandemic? Did you feel compelled to share how much you too had jumped into the deep end and successfully swum through the challenges of the lockdowns?
The need to do more and more may be hard to resist. Toxic productivity says that just being a survivor isn’t enough. Instead, it says that you must indicate that the pandemic was a catalyst for reaching goals and achievements. This is a draining focus that keeps you from being present. Obsessing over how to create a transformative image without getting to the root of why you aren’t actually productive is a disservice to you. It upends mindful exploration of your feelings and prevents real intimacy with people that need to connect with you. Worse, it may bury anxiety and emotional trauma ensuring that it resurfaces, quite unproductively, later.
You Can Turn Things Around
One of the first steps to combating the pressure to compete is by relentlessly eliminating the competition. Put down the phone. Dedicate the hours spent on the screen on yourself instead by doing what you would love to do whether or not someone was watching. Resist the urge to share every joy or “win” on the internet. Instead ask yourself, what is your relationship with silence and stillness? Is the anxiety of not scrolling worse than the anxiety induced by it? What compels me to engage with social media in the first place? In the days that follow, keep track of how you feel when the only audience you have in life is yourself. Does the pressure to strive and achieve as much as your peers suddenly seem further away and less consuming?
Toxic productivity isn’t an unusual response to the type of stress we’ve been under. It also isn’t a healthy way to go on. Ultimately, the striving associated with toxic productivity is often mired in self-shaming. It works against the self-care and support you need right now. Facing anxiety, insecurity and persistent feelings of guilt or judgment are healthy. You deserve an authentic life, COVID or no COVID. Let’s do the work together and rid your life of toxicity in any form.