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Living With A Chronic Illness Has Changed The Way I Look At Productivity
I’m still ambitious. But I’m also mindful.
I’d fed myself allllll the advice.
“If you didn’t get it, you weren’t trying enough.”
“It’s all in your head.”
“Having trauma isn’t an excuse.”
“Just show up every day.”
The people saying this were all highly successful in their respective fields. So there had to be something in it. Right?
Right?
But when I actually tried to shove my trauma and emotions aside and “show up” every day, I crashed. I simply couldn’t do it. I’d get overwhelmed, I’d switch frantically from one task to another, I’d be overcome by worry and shut down from all the emotion. And obviously, the work didn’t get done.
That’s when I’d go into a negative phase, ranting about how all of those successful people were lying and how no one in real life could ever possibly be that productive and how dare they claim that you could.
Turns out, the truth was somewhere in between.
The creators weren’t lying. But they were assuming (whether intentionally or not) that their readers were neurotypical people.
