Are you feeling burnt out? How to break the hamster wheel of toxic productivity
Do you feel like you spend your day time jumping from task to task? Do you wake up at 3am in a cold sweat over a to-do list that seems to be growing faster than you can check off items? Does the pressure of always being hectic drive you into burnout? Perhaps you have fallen prey to the contemporary cult of toxic productivity.
If the old adage that modern life is a treadmill holds true, lately it’s been starting to feel like an invisible hand is gradually cranking the setting to the max. We spend our days in what appears to be a sprint, driven by the pressure to constantly achieve, achieve, and achieve.
Leisha McGrath is a Dublin-based industrial and organizational psychologist who states that toxic productivity is a growing problem that she regularly addresses in her practice. For her, the urge to be productive becomes harmful when it “interferes with other aspects of a healthy and balanced life, or becomes a mental obsession with constantly wanting to ‘do’.”
This pressure to perform, she says, “is often accompanied by increased adrenal function and elevated cortisol. The nervous system is locked into flight or fight, and this has the potential for some nasty side effects over the long term. Many people are addicted to this state and don’t realize they are in it or that there is another way.”
Social media likely plays a role. As our lives increasingly shift online, they are visible to a greater number of people. And with it the pressure to prove that you have achieved generally accepted standards of success in all areas of life (great job, active social life, perfect family, tidy, nicely furnished home).
But perhaps the real scapegoat is more structural than that. Blame late capitalism. Growing inequalities leave most of the population feeling uneasy about a gradual loss of quality of life. We work harder for diminishing returns, while our work-centric cultures feed us an increasingly dubious belief that we can achieve all the material success we can dream of if we try hard enough.
Meanwhile, the intense media exposure of the lifestyles of the very rich, who invite us to vicariously experience their luxury vacations and top-of-the-line cars and dazzling interiors, makes us acutely aware of all the exquisitely desirable material things we don’t have.
By definition, productivity is an external measure of performance or effectiveness. In itself it is a neutral term. According to some critics, the problem begins when it takes on moral value that goes well beyond a simple method of quantifying output.
In Western capitalist culture, productivity has expanded from a method of evaluating what we do to a method of evaluating who we are. It has become a proxy measure of our worth as human beings. No wonder we all strive like crazy to get ahead. Without external, visible signs of success and achievement, how can we prove our worth?
As a cultural phenomenon, toxic positivity was coined not so long ago by psychologist and social media star Dr. Julie Smith addressed and discussed on the BBC. Her personal definition refers to it as “an obsession with radical self-improvement above all.” The result, she says, “is that no matter how productive you are, you always have a bad feeling that you haven’t done more.”
dr Julie Smith addressed the issue on the BBC
Internalizing this intense pressure to perform not only wears down the mind. In extreme cases, it can cause significant damage to our mental and physical health.
“I see a lot of clients who are almost detached from themselves,” says Leisha McGrath. “They are highly functional professionals, but many of them don’t know themselves at all anymore, and they don’t have the skills to examine themselves and put themselves in the driver’s seat of their own lives.
“As a result, we are becoming a nation of people increasingly disconnected from a sense of the true purpose of our lives.
“I ask my clients, ‘What would you do if you had an eighth day of the week to yourself?’ And more than 80 percent of them have no idea what makes them happy. Their life is a game of reacting to the mole and reacting to whoever yells at them the loudest to get something done. We’re becoming a race of “human doers,” not “people,” says McGrath.
“The long-term effects of this can have tremendous physical and mental effects in the form of serious illness, broken relationships, loss of hope…
“So many of the people I see aren’t really happy in their lives. You feel overwhelmed and powerless to bring about change. Their confidence has eroded and they live on autopilot. This robs them of their ability to have daily joy and vitality.”
Despite this, McGrath remains optimistic as she sees more and more people from younger generations stepping out of the trap.
“Even over Covid, people have rediscovered the joy of walking in nature, gardening and cycling in the area,” she says. “But our messages/socialization have a big focus on being productive, consuming, doing, supposedly elevating, striving, exceeding goals, etc. Unproductive day, no agenda.
“In my professional opinion, we’re badly off balance here and we’re paying the price. When I introduce the concept of a deliberately unproductive day in my talks and workshops, people are flabbergasted and literally don’t know how to have such a day.”
Although cultural pressures play a large role in toxic productivity, there are many people for whom it stems from an already disregulated emotional state. It can be a particular problem for those who are naturally anxious. According to McGrath, the need to constantly achieve something can be associated with high-functioning anxiety.
“We know that stress hormones are released in our bodies when we’re locked into this heightened state of flight or fight, and the constant need to be perfect in absolutely everything is exhausting and impossible,” she says. “People often have levitating fear when trying to slow down or stop their toxic productivity, and feelings of anxiety are now so normal that those without it often seem strange.
“I don’t think we can live a happy, healthy, authentic life if we’re caught in this hamster wheel… We really need to be serious about striving for balance, integrating calm, rejuvenation, and joy into our lives. And that will absolutely lower the anxiety levels,” she says.
For those struggling, McGrath advocates simple measures to try to bring some balance back into their lives. Like all mental health problems, recovery begins with acknowledging the problem. From there, a shift in priorities and mindset can be effected.
McGrath recommends finding ways to “connect and prioritize important relationships and other sources of support for you — nature, books, pets.”
She also advises taking time to prioritize “joy, laughter, rest and pause. Believe in their importance, keep a journal with them, be curious and excited to find out what works for you.”
https://www.independent.ie/life/feeling-burnt-out-how-to-get-off-the-hamster-wheel-of-toxic-productivity-41527941.html Are you feeling burnt out? How to break the hamster wheel of toxic productivity