Back into the toxic productivity mindset (again)
I am very rational and feel socially awkward most of the time. I have been very emotional most of my life, but since summer last year, I have noticed more and more that my empathy is decreasing and I feel more and more numb.
I barely do things for fun, just because I feel obligated to. Like visiting friends. Or I have a boyfriend. Some days are worse than others, but overall I guess I´ve changed in a way that I tend to prioritize life admin stuff like house chores or planning over living a life more often than I want to admit.
The main reason is my inherent feeling of being not enough if I don´t accomplish 10 tasks on a workday and 20+ on a work-free day. Together with an emotional numbness my toxic tendency of wanting to be productive 24/7 kicks in these days heavily.
I still have a social life like meeting with my boyfriend 2–3 times a week or having at least one social gathering each month. Most of the time it´s just my BFF, but that feels like enough, as our conversations are pretty deep most of the time and I need 2–3 days to fully reflect.
But when I am alone I do stuff like house chores, journaling, sense-making within my PKM, and sometimes crafting or reading a book. For sure: like 90% of the books I read are non-fiction. So I follow the clicheé of somebody who barely consumes fiction pretty well. I feel emotionally disconnected from everything and struggle with feelings like joy, gratitude, and other positive feelings.
Why? My urge to learn something is more dominant than my urge to distract me from life. More often than not it feels like “this is what I should be doing”. But I´ve gotten to a point where I feel trapped in the self-help and productivity world. So I guess it´s time to take a step back from all this stuff and get more into actively doing something in your life. Something less or non-productive at all.
Sadly this is not the first time I´ve gotten stuck with such a mindset. I feel whenever life throws a curveball like a boring job, family issues, or a larger bureaucracy project, or when fall and winter approaches, the tendency to get stuck in such a mindset increases exponentially.
Thus I´ll shift my priorities slightly towards handcrafts. I feel the urge to spend with more mindful stuff which forces me to stay in the present moment, which forces me to consume less, which forces me to allow my mind to wander.
The first step towards this was getting a mandala-coloring book, where I forced myself to color at least 10 mins a day. I am allowing myself to listen to music while doing this, but stuff like podcasts, audiobooks, or YouTube videos are forbidden.
I´ve gotten interested in different crafts sets for cross stitching, and beadwork, and a larger Christmas star origami project will arrive soon.
From experimenting with these crafts I hope to get a better sense of what off-screen hobby I could get in the long time. Starting next year I´ll have a full-time office job, thus I plan to reduce my private screen time a bit.
As my health throws a curveball as well, it´s time to get productive on the most neglected areas of my life soon: my sedentary lifestyle, my unhealthy nutrition, and my sleep quality. To some extent, I´ll need my productivity-related notes as well as my PKM, and my trackers…
But this time I´ll focus more on defining a clearer vision and force myself to think more about projects and small but sustainable habits instead of tracking every step I walk perfectly. I am still developing an in-depth vision these days, so I´ll keep you updated.
