Toxic Productivity and 3 Ways to Avoid It

Eamon Storer
4 min readNov 20, 2023

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Productivity hacking and personal optimization are great fun. My whole blog is about how to optimize your life for maximum productivity as a writer. But there is danger in consuming productivity content. Toxic-Productivity.

It’s very easy to be constantly thinking about what you’re doing and whether it’s optimized for maximum productivity, I definitely fell into this trap.

Toxic productivity refers to the harmful mindset that places excessive pressure on oneself to be constantly productive, often at the expense of mental and physical health.

This is particularly pernicious as you can be blinded by productivity where every second of your day you feel bad if you’re not doing something worth doing.

Avoiding toxic productivity is important for maintaining a healthy work-life balance and overall wellbeing

So I have compiled some helpful reminders and actionable steps so you don’t fall into the productivity trap.

Tip 1. Prioritise Self-Care

The biggest problem with toxic productivity is that it is constantly in the back of your mind, even when you are trying to unwind.

This means it’s really important to be aware of what time is just for you. No podcasts, no motivational content, just you and whatever you’re doing.

Your ‘me time’ may consist of playing video games, reading, crossword puzzles, walking, or any number of relaxing things.

Personally, I have a few types of ‘me time’ one is where I am doing something with music in the background or entertainment just to turn the brain off for a while, mostly this time consists of video games and reading.

The second type of personal time is when I’m walking. When I’m walking I listen to nothing, just me and my thoughts. I find this a refreshing mental reset, as I do it every day, I have found tons of benefits.

I’ve actually done a post on it if you want to check that out:

So be sure to set a time when you are completely engaged in your activity and it’s ok to not be doing anything productive in this time. I’ve found this to be a major help.

Tip 2. Advice does NOT Apply to Everyone

This tip has been a game-changer for me.

Nowadays, everyone has an opinion of what you should be doing with your time, or what the most productive thing you should be doing is.

The problem with this is productivity is different for everyone. Everyone finds values in different tips, as obviously, everyone’s life is different so one circumstance applies to one person’s life but does not suit another person.

My biggest example of this was when I discovered cold showers.

I know it’s very ‘alpha male’ to do cold showers, I don’t anymore, but I did.

I would have a cold shower every night before bed.

What I found was that if I take the cold shower it would increase my heart rate and my alertness, not something you want when going to bed. This resulted in me thinking I was having trouble with my heart, which brought on frequent panic attacks and eventually, I was taken to the hospital in case there was something wrong with my heart. There wasn’t.

It just goes to show that if you try and jam routines and regulations into your daily life sometimes, they just don’t suit you.

And that’s ok.

Tip 3. Celebrate your Success

When you’re constantly on the move there is no time for reveling in the things you’ve achieved, but doing so is absolutely pivotal if you want to not get burnt out.

Every day you are succeeding in things, even if you’re not doing anything particularly spectacular.

If you got out of bed early. That’s a success.

If you managed to keep your cool in an argument. That’s a success.

If you wrote one sentence in your novel. That’s a success.

Be sure you notice the things you succeed in on a daily basis as becoming aware of what you are doing well, you’re brain isn’t constantly criticising you for not doing anything with your time.

And if it does, you can point at your success and tell your brain, “Look at this awesome thing I did I deserve my personal time”.

You do need to be careful that you aren’t celebrating non-stop, you still need to be pushing forward but you just need to be aware of the things you do well each day.

Conclusion

I hope these three tips are of some sort of use to you if you are struggling with toxic productivity. Just a reminder they were;

  1. Prioritise your Me Time
  2. Productivity advice does NOT apply to everyone
  3. Celebrate your Successes

If you liked this post check out this one about how to avoid procrastination;

If you like stuff like this consider following me. I publish a new post about productivity and writing tips every. Single. Day.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day :)

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Eamon Storer

Learning to write and teaching the lessons I learn along the way :)