How Toxic Positivity May Affect Your Productivity
Sometimes the poorest decision comes with the best intention.
Coming from a so-so academic background, I always believe in hard work and dedication. After all, the difference between someone who could and someone who don’t is the time and effort they have spent. All your sweats will grow a fruit of your labor called achievement.
When I started working in my first company, I usually spent afterwork hours to continue my job. Things I couldn’t finish in the usual work day would continue at night. I wouldn’t leave my desk until it’s late or I would continue working at home. Sometimes, it took up my sleep hours and tired me out, but I always thought that I’ve done something good, something that proved my dedication and hard work.
Until I realised how wrong I was.
Years of working experience later, I was just starting my first day as a new hire. Immediately I was given tasks to finish. With the same mindset I always had, I worked until night and different from my previous offices, in that time, I am the only one working. Everyone else was getting ready to get home or just leisurely relaxing.
I admit, I felt some kind of arrogance, I thought that I was better than everybody else because I was the only one who didn’t mind to spend a couple of hours to do more work. But not long after that, a senior colleague noticed me and went to my desk.
Him : Hi Dev! What are you doing?
Me : I was just finishing these tasks, it may take a while.
Him : Are you okay? Why didn’t you finish it sooner, at work hours?
The tone was not a condescending one, but a genuine concern.
It intrigued me, did I do something wrong? I spent a couple days talking to my supervisor, the HR team, and even the CEO. Discussing how I thought working late might be a good thing. I remembered my supervisor was smiling when she said:
Working on time is a good sign of productivity. Working late means you need to learn more.
When you are given some tasks, you are expected to finish them in the designated time. It means the company put the trust in your ability to handle that much work per hour. Taking more hours can be interpreted as your capability is misread; or you don’t perform at the level you was expected. After all, the one who gives you the tasks is your supervisor, someone who is supposed to know you better and is paid to manage your work.
Exception can be made when there’s special event or occasion, but it’s something that will not happen everyday.
Another downside in more working time is less rest. I admit even though it feels good to finish the work by adding more hours, I felt drowsy in the next day. It could (and did!) affect my work and I know I can do better if I do my work in a fully rested state.
The discussion with my co-workers continued after that. There were many things I’d become aware of. Doing them, I always come with best intention, but looking from other perspective, it just looked like I’m reducing my productivity.
Some of key points of my learnings are:
- Working late is bad for long term outcome.
Taking more time to do the work can be a bad habit. In the future, you will value your time less than what it should be. Rather than having a thought to spend more hours to work, think what you can do in that time. You can improve your capabilities, spend more time with friends and family, or even master new skills.
Try looking for “how to do more work in the same amount of hours” rather than “do the same work in more hours”.
Efficiency is a really good mindset to have. And maybe it’s not the amount of work is too much to be done in the work hours. Maybe there are some time that you are less focused, like checking social media, or playing some videos in Youtube. - Taking more work doesn’t always mean a good thing.
“Are there any more work to do? I’ll be glad to do it.”
The more things we do, the less our focus on each one of them. It takes dedication to increase our capability to deliver the same result with more tasks in hand. Taking more work means:
a) you are confident you can deliver the same quality with the same hours with more work.
b) If you are able to do more, you are obligated to be appreciated more.
It’s always a good thing to improve yourself, and taking more work may bring you to be able to deliver better result. But if it always come with more and more extra works, you have the right to request more benefits, as you prove you can bring more value than you were expected.
If it doesn’t happen, it might be bad not just for you but also your colleagues and the job desc itself. It might be perceived that everyone can deliver the same amount of result with the same pay.
Now, if you have proved yourself and your supervisor doesn’t respond to it, maybe it’s better to find new place that would value your work better. - Spend some moments before saying yes, especially to new challenges
Beside capability, there are capacities. There are limited time you can take to learn something. Mastering one thing is different than being a jack of two trades. A new challenge is always alluring and the buzzwords out there is always to discover new things.
Now you might need to remember how vast the sea of knowledge is. In any field of work, there are different specialities and sometimes there are huge difference between one and another. For example, a UX Designer can learn user research, animation design, and web development, but there’s only a small number of practitioners who can master them all and will take a long time to do. While in the same time, it would be better to keep focus on specific topic and adapt accordingly. It’s also possible the knowledge of user research or design itself will evolve further in the future.
Do you have ever felt some toxic positivity in your workplace? What did you do to manage it? Share your thoughts in comments or chat with me in linkedin
