A productivity guilt trip
The pithy Malayalam phrase “Inikku vayya” or its inadequate English counterpart “I’m tired” sits on the tip of my tongue at most points of the day now, offered unsolicited to anyone with ears. But I wish I could say it each time without feeling indicted for it; I wish I wasn’t the one doing the indicting.
Especially now, it seems almost ungrateful to be saying the phrase, when I continue to be couched in various privileges and comforts — pandemic notwithstanding — traversing new career paths, sheltered for what feels like brain-wringingly long, but sheltered, nonetheless. In light of this, my ‘tiredness’ is a persona non grata with no solid ground to stand on. So, my logical follow-up to that phrase is never the response “you should rest” but rather “what did you do to deserve rest”, or its meaner cousin “what do you have to complain about?”.
Am I just a feckless adult in the throes of millennial ennui? Why am I not, per productivity’s prescription, vibrating like a molecule unto a promised elevated state of personhood or status? Au contraire, alongside people who are animated thus, I am merely palpitating to erratic beats.
I think what I also mean to express through this tedious repetition is a sense of…guilt. Guilt at not meeting some set standard of utility through productivity. Psychologists call this ‘productivity guilt’: the mindset of feeling like you aren’t doing enough, creating enough, achieving enough, compared to your idealized expectations of productivity. These idealized expectations of productivity, as distinguished from discipline (a means to an end), become ends in themselves, and get linked to self-worth.
While I’ve always had a nagging suspicion of these stringent ideas of productivity that link self-worth to utility, I’ve never been able or inclined, for that matter, to articulate why. (I was busy conforming).
Even in a period of adulthood when I did muster some critique of this productivity model, I always did it with a sense of resignation to what is, and I’d never been incensed enough by it, as I ought to have been. Ironically, this was also the period in which I was most productive, at a job that paid in ‘experience’ (read: peanuts). I earned the self-anointed, ardently coveted title of ‘hard-worker’. As a severance package, I got crippling anxiety, half-decent MS Word skills, and a perennial fear of people in lawyer’s robes. Clearly a win-win for all.
For a person who now has the liberty of managing her own work hours, I realize I’m an awful boss to myself. And I get this nagging feeling that this is no accident, that this was always the design: this immuring hyper-attunement to the ticking clock, and my constantly fluctuating worth. But more tellingly, that this is not just some spontaneous way in which “the world works”, this is a deliberate system.
My criticism and anger, therefore, are squarely directed at productivity culture but more deservingly at its insidious progenitors- neoliberalism and meritocracy. Like all good villains, they’ve masqueraded as extras, lounging in the background.
Among its various other tenets, neoliberalism ties worth to achievement; meritocracy posits that a person’s achievements result solely from individual attributes, work, and virtue. It’s no wonder we wrongfully believe ourselves to be at the center of the equation, why there is so much pressure that results and so much pain.
This also clarifies my strange reverence for sanctioned ‘breaks’ like weekends or vacations. When Sunday rolls around like a sacred reset button, I am joyous and relieved. But underpinning this sacredness has always been the notion that we rest and recharge only to deploy our energies into the same pursuits when the week begins- that rest/leisure, in and of itself, lacks value.
It explains why tiredness is a constant companion: in a world where perfectionism and exploitation are prized, rest is resistance- its own exertion.
Acknowledging that there are bigger forces at play here is vital. Neoliberalism relies and thrives on this misconception of productivity obsessions’ real origins.
Take for instance the results when I Google- “how to overcome productivity guilt”. I am met with responses most all of which suggest methods like “understanding that humans make mistakes/ nobody’s perfect” or some variant of that. And it is so unsettling. It implies that my guilt is solely the product of my thinking process. And that’s grossly inaccurate because it is incomplete.
In actuality, the main sources of guilt are carefully constructed, well-oiled systems that rely on our labour and this sense of inadequacy to function. These systems also insidiously affect how we perceive the rest of society — as competitive and ruthless, how we think the world perceives our failures — unforgivingly, and creates the consequent sense of alienation. It keeps us from reaching out to each other and building solidarity, the kind that could dismantle these systems.
In light of these belated epiphanies, it’s par for the course to give in to the self-defeating mandate of trying to save the world, and consequently collapse in despair at the impossibility. Like these systems rely on us, we are tied to these systems too, to make a living, to get by. Ideals get sanded over by reality, yes.
But while we may not be able to single-handedly fix things, we can attempt to reconcile this alienation by holding space for other people and ourselves. To have conversations questioning the status quo. On a more personal level, I know I can start by redefining my ideas around ‘wasting time’ and what constitutes good use of time, and hopefully inculcate in myself the understanding that my self-worth doesn’t fluctuate like stocks in a market.
