Toxic Productivity

I am terrified of being lazy. Or rather, of other people thinking I am lazy. This obsession started way back in middle school with the ridiculous after school program of GATE (Gifted and Talented Education), which was a program that selected kids someone decided were better than other kids and put them all together after school to do special “gifted” kid activities. As fun as it was, only now do I realize that this program didn’t actually do me any favors other than give me an undeserved superiority complex and make it so whenever I wasn’t naturally talented at something, I immediately decided it wasn’t for me. This attitude continued into high school when I took as many AP classes as possible and participated in outside activities continuing to believe if I was good at school, I could do anything. College was a similar experience, taking so many classes at once I blasted through it in 3 years. And now I work, I bounced around a little bit before finally landing my “dream job” as an air traffic controller. It’s amazing how fast you suddenly find yourself wearing adult shoes and adult clothes with baggage and responsibilities you didn’t realize were so heavy.

So now I work, and I wonder what the hell I am doing with my life. I am successful, per the textbook definition of successful. I made it to my “dream job”, I own a house and not one or two, but four cats. People come to clean my house for me, I have a king size bed. But this isn’t what I imagined, success was supposed to be fun, I get to enjoy my life now, right? But I don’t spend much time at home, my house is a mess the weeks the cleaners do not come, my cats entertain each other, and it’s almost impossible to see any of my friends, my family. I have not played my flute in 3 days. I guess you could call this adulthood, but I think about the price of getting here. Specifically getting me here at this job. The number of relationships I have burned, time spent away from home, away from friends, away from myself. Grind until you’re successful, isn’t that what I was supposed to do? But I have never been out of the country, never lived outside the desert. I went to school, then I went to college and then I went to work. I worked while I was in college. All to get me here, a place I did not choose to live, at a facility that will never have enough staffing.

Toxic productivity, or basing one’s self-worth on how productive you are in a day/over the course of your life so far. It seems like we are all competing in an endless game of who can be busier, get less sleep, have more hobbies, work more. With a productivity mindset it can be impossible to allow yourself to rest as it always feels like you are being lazy. But there is a difference between laziness and rest. Rest is necessary to having a healthy mental and emotional mindset, it allows us to calm down, quiet the mind, and remember why we are working so hard in the first place.

I say this and I have yet to take my own damn advice.

As someone who has been raised to believe good grades and success are the keys to happiness, I struggle to keep productivity and self-worth separated. I don’t blame this on my parents entirely, I doubt they expected me to take it to the extent I did, and they could only protect me so much from the rise of social media. While I enjoy social media and the connection it has brought to society, it has also created this idea that we need to be productive at all times in order to matter. Other people are watching to see if we succeed or fail. There has been a recent trend (trap) going on called the “that girl” aesthetic into which I fell. While on the surface it seems like a good thing, people trying to become the best versions of themselves, “glowing up”, it has many unwritten and unhealthy implications. For those who are not aware, the “that girl” aesthetic usually involves a girl (or guy/nonbinary, it is not gender exclusive) showing off to social media their routine that will turn them into a “main character”. This usually includes getting up early, a workout, some type of healthy-looking breakfast, journaling, then moving about with the rest of their day. While these all aren’t bad things the issue is that this viral trend is teaching people that they are not already the main character of their own lives!! That there are certain things required in order to become the main character, that right when they wake up and start the day, their actions define who they are as a person, that normal isn’t good enough. I fell into this trap, it was during the height of the pandemic when suddenly work wasn’t my main focus, I had BE PRODUCTIVE written in notes around the house, lists of things to do so I didn’t become irrelevant, I mean who doesn’t want to be “that girl”? But I am a shift worker, so this lifestyle wasn’t attainable or mentally healthy for me. I couldn’t get up early enough, get my workout in before work or have the time to meal prep all this healthy food.

For a while I felt like I couldn’t be “that girl” without these things, “that girl” doesn’t sleep in because it would be lazy, or “that girl” eats overnight oats for breakfast and wouldn’t dare make store bought cinnamon rolls and eat four of them in one sitting. “That girl” has self-control, beauty, grace, a skin care routine. All these things that we imagine are required for us to be a main character. This is all fake, an illusion created by social media and society itself, you are enough just the way you are. Your worth is not determined by how productive you are in a day. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have dreams and ambitions, or things you want to do in a day. But if you don’t finish that to do list, don’t fold the laundry decide to order out instead of cook, or leave the cat vomit on the floor for an extra day, you aren’t less of a person for any of this. Working out doesn’t make you better than anyone else, “That girl” doesn’t need to have a small waist or wear size 0 pants. You already are “that girl” and you are important just for existing.

I wasn’t able to go to work for a couple of months and it killed me. I lost all sense of who I was and my purpose in life. I was only ever working towards something new, so the stagnation of being at home felt like hell. I impulsively started a master’s program to fill the time, assigned myself random projects to feel like I was important.

Looking back this feels so wrong. If I could only go back now and savor those days of not having to report to someone. No alarm clocks or consequences of messing up.

I hate the mentality shift that has taken place since the world has come out of the pandemic. For a time, it wasn’t a bad thing to not be a productive member of society, to sip wine at noon or play animal crossing all day. As life has attempted to go back to normal regardless of the circumstances, it seems employers are now overcompensating for this lost time, instead of being compassionate and understanding companies are now demanding more from their workers for the same or less pay to catch up on all the lost time and delayed projects, there is endless over time available. Mental illness is rampant now more than ever and yet everyone is supposed to just go back to work, be mentally healthy and continue life as if nothing ever happened. But I cannot pretend to be the same person I was two years ago. Time really is our most precious and limited resource. Every day the lives of thousands weigh on my shoulders, a wrong move could endanger the safety of others. Now I feel the dream is to sit at my desk at home with a coffee and the sound of rain pattering against the window. We got some new trainees at work recently and I was listening to them talk about the job with fresh eyes. They seemed lighter, excited, and rightfully so since their career was put on hold with the pandemic. Nothing weights heavier than experience, and although I have only been fully certified for a short period of time, the lack of staffing and amount of overtime feel like a wave I can’t see the top of. It keeps rising as I watch, trying to decide the best course of action forward. What I wouldn’t give to repeat schooling with the knowledge I have now. To go back to college and do it again what would I choose? Meteorology? Pilot? Music? I know now that it is no longer about the end goal but the day-to-day tasks that are the most important. We are taught to decide our futures based on titles and roles usually early on in our lives. This often leads to disappointment when the reality of these daily tasks set in, and you realize maybe this isn’t the life you had imagined. I’ve been thinking about the type of person I want to be remembered as rather than the title attached to my name. Will it be it loving and kind, hardworking, curious, or that I lacked time to create relationships, was often impatient and irritable. It is not what you do that matters but how you do it, we are not here forever, make the most of the time you are given.