On Productivity Guilt
And the things that have helped me alleviate the guilt. Maybe they will help you too.
I am one of those people who used to feel guilty about doing things just for fun.
Ever since I moved to the U.S. to start my undergraduate education, I have been socialized to feel the need to be productive all the time. For example, when I do chores, such as folding my laundry or cleaning, I had to put my podcast player on to feel like I am not "wasting my time." When I turn on Netflix, I felt compelled to choose something of "learning value," either a documentary or a Spanish TV show, to at least Netflix my time away to something educational or learning Spanish. Even worse, I watched Ted Talks during my lunch breaks so that I could still learn something while eating. I used almost only to read non-fiction because I found them more "practical."
During graduate school, I was balancing part-time work and full-time coursework. I wanted to feel like I could handle anything that comes my way. I constantly sought out podcasts, articles, and YouTube videos with titles like "How to be a productive person", "Tips for optimizing your day", and "10 tricks for getting things done". I would mimic those "productivity gurus" to try out different productivity apps and methods to optimize my productivity. When I couldn't handle everything, I felt like a failure when everyone seemed to have their act together. Now thinking back, I was hardly giving myself a real break.
For a long time, my sense of self-worth depended on how productive I was or how much I could get done in an hour. If I didn't complete everything on my to-do list for the day, I would tell myself that I am not good enough. If I didn't go through every single unread email in my inbox at the end of the day, I would feel behind. I was trying to get as much as done in a day. I was not prioritizing my health; I was not prioritizing my sleep. I was burned out without realizing that I was burned out or really what that meant.
Productivity guilt, later on, I learned, is a result of internalizing toxic capitalisms, in which our self-worth equals our productivity, and "wasting time" is bad. And it ruled my life for a long time.
Capitalism tells us unless we are productive, "docile bodies" (Foucault, 1995), then we cannot be worthy in "the capitalist factory" (Lafargue, 1904): "the capitalist factory" (ibid), of course, being the world we inhabit.
This toxic capitalism permeates throughout our lives, and it has not only led to a stressful working culture where we equate our self-worth with our productivity, but it also continues to perpetuate ableism and oppression of disabled people.
Since the pandemic, I hear more and more people talking about prioritizing mental health, sleep, and exercise to boost our immune system to stay healthy, how we should enjoy things for the pure fun of it, and how we should feel okay to be not productive all the time. The more I hear those things, the more okay I think about relaxing and paying attention to my well-being because I didn't want to get sick. Sharing is normalizing.
Because of the quarantine and the flexibility given by the work-from-home situation, I had more time to prioritize my sleep, my exercise routine, and my mental health.
I started to exercise more.
I learned to stop and walk away from my workstation at 5 pm.
I started to feel less guilty about sleeping in a little bit on the weekends.
I started to do more things just for fun and enjoy the present.
I started to feel okay about taking sick leaves when I need a mental break.
I started to read and enjoy more fiction, which has opened up the world for me.
All of this sounds so simple, basic, and basic, sometimes cliché, but it took me a long time and a lot of conscious effort to start even trying. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't, but I keep trying.
a sweet moment in life.