The Toxic Productivity Myths That Everyone (Secretly) Believes
Everyone is obsessed with productivity these days (including everyone here at Simplish!). But with the possibility of working from anywhere in the era of the New Normal, it seems like there is no escaping from the fervor to get as many things done as possible at all times.
Enter: toxic productivity.
You heard me right. If you have:
Said or felt that you were "too busy" in the last few weeks
Heard someone else say this recently
Felt the need to race through your day, only to stay up late to meet deadlines
Beat yourself up for not doing enough despite all of the above đ
Frequently felt like a zombie in a state of perpetual burnout
...then you probably have first hand experience with this unhealthy form of productivity.
The fact is this: Our mental health is suffering on a global scale and many of us feel stuck in a never ending cycle of to-doing. We have conflated personal efficiency with morality, leading to a pandemic of guilt, shame, and judgement around what we do and don't check off our to-do list on any given day.
âBut Lavi! Isnât Simplish a productivity app?â You ask. âIsnât getting things done the most important thing about Simplish?â
This may come as a surprise, but in a word; no. It isn't!
From the early days of establishing Simplish with my co-founder, CTO and husband, Anish, we recognized that the productivity marketplace was too focused on output, and not on people. We are actually more committed to combating the toxic productivity trap than promoting productivity itself!
Our philosophy is that if your will to accomplish more is just driving you to do more and more and more - try doing less. In order to break free of toxic productivity, you need to take a more holistic approach to your work and life and spend time thinking before jumping into action for its own sake.
In order to break free of toxic productivity, you need to take a more holistic approach to your work and life.
So What is Toxic Productivity?
Toxic productivity is rooted in the false belief that our worth is tied entirely to our output. This belief is built into the American cultural value system, and is expressed in our glorification of entrepreneurship and hard-line work ethics through a âdo-whatever-it-takesâ ethos to get the results you are after. While at first this seems like an admirable value, going hard all of. the time simply neglects a fundamental part of being human: the need to rest. You need idle time and periods of doing and producing nothing to truly care for your mind, body, and soul.
Growing from this seed of false belief, toxic productivity is the habit of doing without reflecting on how, why, when or if you should do at all. The driving force behind toxic productivity is to keep things moving at all costs. And despite the messaging from our culture that constant productivity is the most important thing, thoughtful productivity is far more important.
Among many factors, toxic productivity can be fuelled by economic pressure that limits your ability to find other ways of working, the need to prove your self-worth to others, and the tendency to rely on external approval to make decisions.
5 Toxic Productivity Myths Everyone (Secretly) Believes
Our understanding of productivity is formed by both experience and social conditioning. In this mix, though, there are a few notable myths about productivity that are not only totally untrue - theyâre un-helpful and un-healthy. Here are the major myths that everyone seems to believe about productivity that arenât helpful to living your life, and actually drag you down in the long run:
1. Stressing out is required to be productive.
Everyone seems to believe that being stressed is somehow the necessary cost to being productive. This is not true! It may seem like that when your hours deep into an all nighter and your cortisol levels are spiking in advance of an impending deadline. But over the long term, being in a constant state of stress leads to workplace burnout and energy depletion. Suffering from the toxic productivity trap will actually lead to less productivity, creativity and deep work.
2. Busy-bees are VIPs.
Productivity doesn't mean that something that needs to be happening at all times, but this is so deeply engrained in our work ethic that it seems almost controversial to argue against! It is 100% a myth that there is no inherent value in free time, personal time or "off screen" time. We have unrealistic expectations of what we can do in any given day or week or month. We need to stop preferential treatment of busy people and acknowledge that good work can be slow, invisible, and even (possibly) involve doing nothing.
3. Gold stars are more important than your physical and mental health.
Ok, yes - occasionally it's incredibly satisfying to go above and beyond at work to win the recognition you deserve from others. But it's totally delusional to prioritize these gold stars above your health. If youâre not feeling good, how are you going to use all the zillions of productivity tips you read on Medium or Instagram to kick butt at work? How often do you feel anxious, depressed, lonely, or confused - all valid emotions in normal times, and especially in this never ending-pandemic post-quarantine limbo we are in - and then procrastinate to numb it all out? It's a total myth that productivity somehow follows different logic than our wellbeing.
4. Everyone is watching and waiting for you to fail.
This may be far-fetched, but many people may be driven to get things done by the fear of public failure - not the guilt of doing less. When everyone else is constantly busy - shouldn't you be too? In the heat of a busy day, your mind might try to tell you that everyone is watching and waiting for you to fail. Let me tell you now: it's not true! First of all, everyone else is way too busy to notice đ Secondly, everyone is probably just waiting for someone to tell them they've done enough, too. You can be that person đ
5. If itâs not on LinkedIn / Facebook / Insta, it never happened.
With the rise of LinkedIn as a popular social media platform, it seems even more necessary to post updates about your educational and work life to affirm to yourself that they are actually happening. Let's be clear: what happens IRL is really happening. And a lot of stuff that happens on social media never actually happened - it's pure myth!! So remember that before stressing out about updating your socials every time a life event comes your way... and just enjoy the real life experience!
Reflecting on the Hotbed of Hustle Culture
Before I started Simplish with Anish, I worked as a litigation associate at a Big Law firm in New York City. As a lawyer, my productivity was quite literally measured by the minute! In the world of corporate law, all that truly seemed to matter was the number of billable hours we clocked in for clients. I had to account for my hours in 6-minute increments; this excluded mundane tasks like bathroom breaks and necessary administrative work. Those 6-minute increments bred an environment and ethos that made it nearly impossible to AVOID toxic productivity.
Needless to say, Iâm still detoxing from that experience of productivity. It took years of self-reflection, travel to places with different work / life values, and a serious investment in breaking old habits for me to recover my sense of what needs to get done in a day (6 minutes at a time).
The thing is this: hustle culture isnât just a problem for young professionals in big cities anymore. After recently speaking with some high school students, I was disheartened to feel how deeply the âdo-or-dieâ mentality has permeated with teens. They are so stressed out! The teens I spoke to seem totally bent on the message that that an exhaustive pace is required for whatever the next step of the rat race is (getting into college, getting your first job) How did we get here? And how do we turn things around?
Productivity As a Means, Not an End
One of the most important things that we miss about productivity is that it is not supposed to be a goal unto itself. The whole point of it is to clear space and time in your life to be able to do the things that you really want to do. When people become obsessed with their system as a means of production, they lose the ability to attain any kind of work life balance.
Could the most important thing about productivity be how good you feel about yourself when you finish a task that required focused effort? Or maybe the beauty of productivity is getting to know yourself through a personal self-care routine that leaves you radiant and positive? The point is that productivity is a means, not the end goal; thatâs up to you to discover! I like to think of Simplish as less of a productivity app, and more of a possibility app. Itâs a tool to organize your possibilities.
How To Combat Toxic Productivity
The good news is that it is absolutely possible to free yourself from othersâ expectations and put YOU back in charge of your to-do-list. At first, this will look like creating boundaries, practicing self-care, and dampening the voices of work-related guilt (yes, you can stop feeling guilty for everything you donât do - once and for all).
Recognize the Scale of the Problem
The trouble with toxic productivity is that it's perceived to be beneficial to society. Hustling day in and day out without pausing to think, feel, or do your laundry contributes to economic growth. Overworking may even earn you kudos and privileges in your workplace. But what is driving this advance? In the case of toxic productivity, the answer is guilt. Guilt drives us to answer emails at all hours, rearrange or cancel holidays according to our work schedule, and perhaps even keep jobs that we may be better off quitting. Toxic productivity will remain a major challenge as long as our primary metric for societal success in America is monetary gain. The takeaway here is that we need to collectively prioritize health and happiness above monetary gain to address the root causes of toxic productivity.
So go easy on yourself đ Think of toxic productivity like a nasty habit that is unconsciously validated by almost everyone you know. It may take time and major lifestyle changes to change.
Pick a Thing... (Just One Thing!)
This is kind of like the not-to-do-list list, but for days when you are feeling really overwhelmed. Take a look at all of the things you've planned to do, and then:
Pick two things.
Hell... pick one thing! That's right: choose the single most important thing on your to-do-list the you need to do. Let everything else go undone.
Make a commitment to yourself to do that one thing, and if needed, call it a day. Slowly, once youâve created that habit, make steps to increase your bandwidth when you are feeling overwhelmed and need to create boundaries.
Set and Track Intentions
To overcome toxic productivity traps, you need to seriously up your intentionality. Re-visiting your âwhyâ once a year when you set New Years resolutions might give you a short-term boost, but the key to improving your relationship with productivity in the long-run is to reflect on your intentions frequently. Ask yourself: Why are you doing what you're doing?
Here's a simple weekly journalling practice to help you out:
Start where you are. If you're super busy, that's ok! Don't wait until you have a breather to set intentions that work toward your dream life - start now.
At the end of your week, take 15 minutes to review what everything you've done throughout the week. Look at to-do-lists, calendars, email threads, and journal entries.
Once you've done that, spend 10 minutes to respond to the prompt: Why are you doing, what you're doing?
With this awareness, set a simple intention for your coming week that reflects your highest, purest, most loving source of motivation.
Do this weekly for as long as it takes to reconnect with your sense of purpose.
Baked-In Goodness: The Simplish Productivity System
Simplish was created with a different goal than most productivity apps or project management tools: Our system is rooted in empathy. We want you to take care of YOU - not just your to-do list - thatâs the philosophy behind the Simplish features that weâre most proud of:
Positive, affirmative quotes featured daily in the app to inspire you
Encouraging reactions in shared to-do lists when tasks are completed
Gentle nudges to set dates and complete flexibility to reset them when life happens!
Itâs not only about maximizing your productivity as if you are a robot. Itâs about helping you to feel good, inspired by the world and connected with the right people, all to help you make steady progress in any area of your life - work, personal goals, health, family, travel, you name it.
The app is designed from the bottom up to make self-care tasks as important as your other tasks. If you're anything like Anish and I, the only way you get things done is to set the intention and make the time for it. Simplish is our tool to do just that.
Why Work Life Balance? Because Being Busy...Sucks
We built Simplish on a foundation of trying to achieve the ever elusive work life balance. I know I know...it sounds like one of those pie in the sky goals! We canât promise that Simplish will make every single day perfectly balanced. But we can promise that our system gives you all of the tools to create more balance in your weeks right at your fingertips. With our workspaces, youâll easily be able to see what areas of your life are claiming the most energy and what areas are being neglected - and plan more of what you need and love to do into your day. We want our system to help you unleash your full potential and create things that will change the world. While doing that, we also want you to take care of yourself, find fulfilment by living a balanced life and feel supported and cared for if you fall off your goals for a while.