How Can I Limit Anxiety About Not Being More Productive?
Know that you’re making both a conscious and subconscious effort to look after yourself
Q: I’m just trying to be a productive human being, but it makes me anxious just thinking about everything I want to do, which causes me to procrastinate or to just simply not do anything, which then causes more anxiety!
On a good note, I’m in a stage of life where everything is great. I’m almost 27, happily single, no kids, I have a fun social life, and a good-enough paying job that I actually love.
But my mind is racing 24/7 with things to do. I want to work out, read, and meditate, but I never make a single effort to do so. I don’t even answer text messages and emails on time (personally, not work stuff).
Again… These are all things that I genuinely WANT to do! But the productive anxiety gets the best of me. I end up doing other irrelevant tasks that are not a priority. I’ve tried using planners, calendars, making lists, and creating a schedule, but I never follow through with any of them.
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A: Good question that I think feels really relevant today as the desire to be productive seems to have turned into its own epidemic. This appears to be especially true amongst people around our age (I’m not much older than 27), and younger kids, as well.
But let me ask you this: How would you feel if you knew everyone else was coming up short on things they wanted to do? What if coming up short was advertised as the norm? Or what if we literally had fewer hours in the day, and the opportunity to be productive was legitimately restricted? I don’t know what your answers would be, but for me, there would be comfort in knowing that everyone was in the same boat, not hiding behind some type of facade, leaving me apt to criticize myself for not doing more. I’d also want to double down on the important stuff, and encourage others to do the same. Maybe you’d have a similar response, maybe not.
Although each day is still limited to 24 hours, I’d like to take it upon myself to assure you that there’s a lot of truth to the other questions. People are constantly left wishing they’d done more, agonizing over it even; yet not talking about it. This is a very normal part of life for those who are privileged enough to have different sources of self-care-based productivity available to them, like you and I. This is not made to minimize your situation (because it can be very troubling), but rather to let you know that you’re in better company than you think, especially during this phase of your life.
You’re swinging into a time in which it’s going to become clearer and clearer that you can’t do everything that you once thought of doing, whether due to circumstances in or out of your control; whether it’s on a big or small scale. So many of the lives you’ve dreamt up for yourself at one time or another are going to have to be waved goodbye to more and more frequently.
And of course, that’s scary! It’s new, and your anxiety is trying to protect you from this unfamiliar, seemingly hostile terrain. But this has much less to do with your potential than it does with the unavoidable need to choose and make sacrifices for the life that seems most sensible. And until we get comfortable with those sacrifices and see the meaning that comes with them, we can get hung up on the idea of what life does make the most sense for us (and “sense” refers to both logical and emotional sense). That’s when we can second guess ourselves, get into trouble, and start judging our anxieties rather than accepting them.
Maybe, just maybe, you’re already making the most of your time. Your choice to have a strong social life and a job that keeps you busy has to take time away from other things. If you want, you can always make a trade. It seems you’re fortunate enough to be in that position. You can not socialize as much and work less in exchange for more time to work out, read, or meditate. That’s on the table. But if you think everything is great in this stage of your life (as you said), it’s possible that you’re happier with your choices than you think you are, and that this struggle is more bred from an unrealistic idea of how much time and energy you truly have at your disposal, or maybe an unhealthy view of productivity.
Let’s think about some questions you can ask yourself to get to the bottom of what’s going on here.
First, does something feel off existentially? So, are some of the ways in which you’re not staying productive even tied to your values? For example, not working out becomes more of a concern if you have aspirations of becoming a personal trainer, rather than if you just want to passively stay healthy.
Or maybe, productivity itself is the value, and it’s not about a certain task. Should this be the culprit, what’s the narrative for you surrounding productivity or productive people? Do you look down upon others who aren’t productive? Is it possible that you emphasize it so much that the act of staying productive has just become unpleasant? Depending on how you’ve been conditioned to approach work or adulthood, maybe those around you believe a non-productive life is a life wasted or a life lived irresponsibly, and in reality, this is more to please someone else.
So then I might ask, can we not just take a break from being productive sometimes? Is a time like this a necessary recharge for you, and actually good for your productivity in the long term? Is it an invitation to start loving the part of you that needs to relax, more than it is a sign that something is wrong with you, you lack work ethic, or you’re not making the most of the time you’ve been given? I don’t know. That’s for you to dig into.
A good way to gain clarity on whether this is about just a general need to stay busy or whether you actually care about the tasks at hand is to consider what you hope to gain from all those tasks specifically. To me, they’re all good forms of self-care (which is wonderful), but don’t necessarily share so much in common outside of that. If they were all really similar, they’d probably be pointing toward an unmet need. In this case, the only string I see connecting them is that they’re popular self-care techniques for mind and body.
So it feels like it’s worth it to think about whether this is about you chasing a need to try to cool down and center yourself, or about maintaining an image or opinion of yourself as a productive person. Or maybe something in between. Whatever the case may be, and until you find the answer, know that you’re making both a conscious and subconscious effort to look after yourself, and that might not be possible without a degree of anxiety.
