Heading image courtesy of Michael James Schneider with a quote provided by writer Jenny Jaffe

8 weeks ago, lockdown was set over the UK(ahem, finally), and my first thought wasn’t, oh God, I finally have some extra time to rest and take a bit of a break in the day. Nope, my first thought was wow, I have an extra 2h30(approx) during the day because I’m no longer commuting, have to iron my clothes, do my make-up, do my hair properly etc for the foreseeable future, and I’m going to invest that in all those courses, classes, gym etc that I have been postponing for months… and that’s what I did for like 3 days, and then I was overcome by burnout, because let’s be real, 2 fashion months non-stop 12-13-14 hour days have a toll on you, no matter how much you choose to ignore that, and it definitely took a toll on me. So instead, I decided to take it easy(or at least easier), and make sure I allotted time for everyone important to me, but also for myself(which is very hard because I tend to sit at the bottom of my own list), and being the complete perfectionist that I am, I devised this really complicated to do list to make sure I stay on top of this… little did I know that it was just tricking my brain into the thought of being productive for the sake of productivity.

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I am the kind of person who loves her to do lists, who thrives in how many things she manages to achieve during a normal day, who analyses a process countless times to make sure she can make it as efficient as humanly possible, and who would add the smallest stuff on her to do for the sake of ‘feeling productive’. And let me tell you something, it’s all bulshit. Yeah, I am productive, and I know I’m really productive without a time sheet, or someone breathing down my neck, and without an overly packed to do list that ends up making me feel rather more guilty with myself than more productive. I thrive in the adrenaline-induced environment given by really close deadlines and I pride myself in being super well organised, but sometimes even a workaholic like me needs an actual break and actual time to just think, and re-asses what makes them happy and what is actually important. Time to separate your worth and purpose from the job you do, and to understand what made you choose that specific job, and that specific place to work in, but also why you gave that place your heart, soul, breaks, holidays and any other possible moment during the day. 

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This pandemic has taught me(very slowly) that my worth is different from my job, and that the feeling of self-worth can also come from small wins. Like for example, my anxiety was incredibly accentuated by the uncertainty of what we are all going through, and I felt quite crushed by it, but I found some light at the end of the tunnel in a great support network and in small tasks that made me feel good(see bullet journal, gratitude list, courses I postponed, even the occasional to do list). It’s like being productive makes you feel wholesome, and then you lose your purpose and feel guilty if suddenly your productivity level drops, so I set out to figure out why does that happen for me? But also, why am I suddenly bombarded with productivity everything when it was so not what I was looking for online?

Society conditions us to be productive, and to do 46272847257382 things at the same time, and to always feel that we don’t have enough seconds, minutes and hours in a day to do every.single.thing we felt that we absolutely needed to do, but sometimes, all we actually need to do is stop, and smell the roses(as the proverbial line says). Pushing that stop button is hard, don’t get me wrong, it took me nearly 8 weeks, and I’ve only barely pushed it, and not fully, and now I might need to proverbially put it back together because lockdown restrictions might be lifted soon, and we will have to return to ‘business as usual’ whatever that may mean. But I really do hope that the learnings of these 7 weeks will stay on, for each and every one of us in our own way, and that we will learn to accept that sometimes we just need a break, and that is enough, and we don’t need to do that extra task of the day just because it makes us have a feeling of pseudo-productivity, when in fact we’re just tired. 

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I noticed that since the lockdown has landed, a lot of productivity articles started popping up out of nowhere, targeting everyone, but also triggering immense feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Why is our sense of self-worth triggered by being productive? Why does everyone measure productivity like it’s some sort of measurement of how good we are by how many things we do in a day. Does that make us feel better about ourselves? I doubt it, those extra 2h30 I wasn’t using for what myself and society deemed productive made me feel horrendous with myself. I lingered in the feeling of guilt for most of my life because I always felt that what I was doing was not enough. And being bombarded by those articles sure did not help with my mental state. But why was it triggering all these very negative feelings? Why did I feel the need to constantly be on and doing stuff?

Yes, productivity absolutely showcases the way you go through tasks, and how organised and efficient you are, and that absolutely helps you in the long run to do more things with less time. But hailing productivity as the thing that makes or breaks you as an employee and human, should not be the case, except for the fact that society puts that pressure on you. We can sit in front of our laptops, like I am now, and think, it’s alright, lost a bit of purpose, but gained all these productive hacks in life, and look at how amazing am I doing, but does that make me happy? The simple answer to that is no, it does not. My mental health suffered immensely from the lockdown, as exemplified in my previous article here. I’ve never felt as sad, annoyed and moody as I have been these past 8 weeks, so I am not surprised that I used those extra 2 and a half hours to just stay in bed and motivate myself to pretty much just get out of it and summon some will to work. It is also no surprise that my anxiety and any other sad things I might have thought about constantly have been heightened by the need to do stuff. I sat on Instagram and saw how many things other people were doing, and I felt inadequate and unproductive, constantly. I still have days when I feel like that, and it is super sad. It is estimated that social media makes us very unhappy, but because I am perpetually busy and overworked I did not necessarily notice it. Now that I took the time to consciously check on that, I stayed less and less on Instagram, I perused productivity posts less and less, and where I thought I can apply every single productivity hack on the internet I just ignored them. I stopped having that constant fear that I am not achieving, because what was there to achieve? Painting things for my dad’s garage? Making a pillow case, or several? Finishing 3 reports 2 weeks before a deadline or taking my time to do them properly and analyse the data? I chose to chill down a bit, and to be productive as much as I could and felt like it. If I have a bad day, I will accept it was a bad day and try and put less pressure on myself than usually, because tomorrow is a new day and there are just as many hours to make things happen.

I’m trying to navigate this time with its ups and downs(a lot of downs on my end), by celebrating small wins, by understanding what my values are and why I should stop ignoring them, by really, truly re-assessing how I adult, and how I deal with life and whatever it throws my way. I do this also by really understanding that not achieving is also a success, and that learning is also part of the process and that I can’t and don’t know everything and it all comes with experience. 

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Hopefully my rant somewhat against being just productive helped you in one way or another. Let me know in the comments below what you do to feel productive in these moments, and how celebrating your small wins helped you go through the guilt that comes with less productivity than you see in other people’s social media.

Love,

A.