Toxic Productivity and The “That Girl” Trend
“Do you have a lot of work-related guilt? Do you often feel like you should be doing more, and that if you’re not doing something, you’re wasting your time? … Are you spending unnecessary time on things that don’t need it?” (Wong) If you answered Yes to most of those, you are a workaholic, or more specifically, you are experiencing toxic productivity. You may be asking “what is toxic productivity” and that can be a hard question to answer because everyone has their own levels of how much they can do. The HuffPost author, Brittany Wong, defines it as “essentially an unhealthy desire to be productive at all times, at all costs.” (Wong)
Over the past year and a half there has been an increasing amount of trends on social media that show someone’s “day in the life” and how they spend their time. At first glance this trend may seem like something positive in the middle of the negativity that is on social media but the longer this trend went on, the more people began seeing the downfalls. While this trend may motivate people to work harder, (as it has for me), it has started to become counter-productive. Many people now feel pressured to always be busy and they don’t take time for themselves. Toxic productivity has been a concept forever but has been scaled up due to the trends. This ideal stems a lot from social media because people are only posting when they are being productive which can seem, to some people, like that is all the person does and therefore everyone should constantly be working or exercising or doing something “productive”.
In an article about toxic productivity in HuffPost, Simone Milasas is quoted saying “Toxic productivity can make us feel like a failure if we’re not doing ‘enough’…when toxic productivity is leading your life, you judge yourself every day for what you haven’t done, rather than looking at what you have accomplished.” (Wong) This quote truly encompasses what toxic productivity is, as well as how much it can affect us. Through social media toxic productivity was able to gain even more traction, the article shows a tweet that said if you don’t leave the pandemic without a new skill or doing something you may have been putting off for a long time “you didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.” (Wong)
Kathryn Esquer, who is a psychologist, says that because quarantine gave us so much unprecedented free time, we felt the need to fill it with whatever we could. Whether that was finding a new skill, creating your own business, jumping at any opportunity for another project at work, etc. We could have filled that time with self-care and relaxing which, in all honesty, would have been a lot more beneficial in the long run because at some point you will burn out from over working and never relaxing. In another article, the author talks about how the need to be on at all times actually “drains us of physical and mental energy”, this results in “a lack of productivity, motivation, and efficiency.” (Seaver) So this shows that always working and always filling free time with things that we feel like we need to be doing, to be seen as productive, is actually far more detrimental than it seems.
In an article written by Arianna Kyriacou she goes through how a TikTok trend is perpetuating toxic productivity. This trend is widely known as the “That Girl” trend where the person making the video is shown getting up early, working out in nice work out clothes, eating a “healthy” breakfast, journaling, and anything else they may show. The author says “the issue with this trend is that #thatgirl assumes that every girl wants this lifestyle and needs to live a lifestyle like this in order to reach their full potential, which is wildly incorrect.” (Kyriacou)
The idea that one must follow a certain/popular routine throughout their day to become as successful as they possibly can is the toxic part of this trend and is where the immense amount of pressure to continue to be overly productive comes from. Through personal experience I can uplift how much this trend can affect someone’s outlook on productivity. At the beginning and through the middle of the pandemic I was not doing a lot, I was just going through the motions of each day because I thought I was on a nice, short break from being at school (turns out I was very wrong). One day I was scrolling through TikTok and started seeing all these videos about being “that girl” or people saying that we need to be using this time to be even more productive. I took this as a sign that I was being way too lazy, so for about 3–4 weeks I went all in on every aspect of my life…worked out everyday, spent unnecessary time on work that I did not need to be doing, and eating healthy (even though I didn’t enjoy the food). After those few weeks I was no longer motivated because I burnt myself out. Luckily, I have become really good at balancing personal time / self care time with being productive and working. I do have to thank the trend for that because I got a lot of ideas of how to structure my days from it.
So, what should you do if you realized you are experiencing toxic productivity? Here are some ways to combat against it;
1) If you can, create your schedule with 10–15 minute breaks in between each task (that may be classes, meetings, or other things you are working on)
2) Try to reduce your screen time throughout the day
3) “If you need time off to recuperate mentally and emotionally, take it”
4) Set boundaries regarding work/school that fit with your day to day life. (Seaver)
Always remember that to be helpful to yourself in the long run, the best decision to make now is not to overwork yourself, but to prioritize learning how to take care of yourself, while still getting work completed.
Works Cited:
Article by Kelsey Weekman. “Health Trend Popular among Gen Zers Leaves Tiktok Users Divided: ‘It’s Better than Drugs’.” In The Know, 15 June 2021, https://www.intheknow.com/post/that-girl-tiktok/.
Google Search, Google, https://www.google.com/search?q=that%2Bgirl%2Btrend&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC9__C06r1AhVjS98KHboCBMwQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1440&bih=789&dpr=1#imgrc=oZH1UOdzrsAccM. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.
Haynes, Jeremy. “If You Don’t Come out of This Quarantine with Either…” Twitter, Twitter, 2 Apr. 2020, https://twitter.com/TheJeremyHaynes/status/1245767684484202496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1245767684484202496%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Ftoxic-productivity-work_l_606655e7c5b6aa24bc60a566.
Kyriacou, Arianna. “Why the ‘That Girl’ Trend Perpetuates Toxic Productivity.” Coven, Coven, 21 July 2021, https://thecovenmag.com/lol/that-girl-and-toxic-productivity.
Maggie Seaver By Maggie Seaver June 17, 2021. “The Dangerous Trap of Toxic Productivity-and How to Break the Cycle.” Real Simple, 17 June 2021, https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/stress/toxic-productivity.
Wong, Brittany. “What Is Toxic Productivity? Here’s How to Spot the Damaging Behavior.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 5 Apr. 2021, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/toxic-productivity-work_l_606655e7c5b6aa24bc60a566.
