Productivity dysmorphia: Watch out for the infinite loop
What happens when a species that is hard-wired for effort meets a system geared for infinite growth? Take a look.
One woman’s sense of detachment from her success, coupled sometimes with shame and often with inadequacy, led her to coin a term for the fallout: “productivity dysmorphia”.
“It is an inability to see my own success,” writes London-based journalist and author Anna Codrea-Rado, in her 2021 essay on the media platform Refinery29. “It’s like I’m looking in the mirror of my professional life and… All I see is a failure.”
We’re now at the point where, rather than dividing our time into periods of work and periods of rest, we lionise the hustle, the grind, the very idea that there are always more mountains to climb.
This mindset is a by-product of internalised capitalism, “where self-worth can be tied to productivity or material success. Anything and everything that you do is never going to be enough,” says Kuldeep Datay, consultant psychologist with the social enterprise Institute for Psychological Health. “Told that one should always be productive, one never develops one’s own criteria for time well-spent.”
It used to be a joke to quote American rocker Warren Zevon’s motto, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, adds life coach Chetna Chakravarthy. “Now, this is the mantra. We see breaks as a waste of time. We’re not realising that breaks are part of the fuel on which we run.”
Over time, the feelings of not having done enough can develop into a sense of inadequacy. We’re stressed and tired, yet still busy and unable to rest. Down this road lies burnout, ill health, and still a sense of failure. There are ways to slow down (there always are). Take a deep breath and click here, for a five-step guide to tackling productivity dysmorphia.
One woman’s sense of detachment from her success, coupled sometimes with shame and often with inadequacy, led her to coin a term for the fallout: “productivity dysmorphia”.
“It is an inability to see my own success,” writes London-based journalist and author Anna Codrea-Rado, in her 2021 essay on the media platform Refinery29. “It’s like I’m looking in the mirror of my professional life and… All I see is a failure.”
We’re now at the point where, rather than dividing our time into periods of work and periods of rest, we lionise the hustle, the grind, the very idea that there are always more mountains to climb.
This mindset is a by-product of internalised capitalism, “where self-worth can be tied to productivity or material success. Anything and everything that you do is never going to be enough,” says Kuldeep Datay, consultant psychologist with the social enterprise Institute for Psychological Health. “Told that one should always be productive, one never develops one’s own criteria for time well-spent.”
It used to be a joke to quote American rocker Warren Zevon’s motto, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, adds life coach Chetna Chakravarthy. “Now, this is the mantra. We see breaks as a waste of time. We’re not realising that breaks are part of the fuel on which we run.”
Over time, the feelings of not having done enough can develop into a sense of inadequacy. We’re stressed and tired, yet still busy and unable to rest. Down this road lies burnout, ill health, and still a sense of failure. There are ways to slow down (there always are). Take a deep breath and click here, for a five-step guide to tackling productivity dysmorphia.
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