REST
How I’m Detoxing from the Cult of Productivity
There’s only one cure for this: rest
For four years, I never went anywhere without my purple clipboard folder. It contained page after page of to-do lists and weekly calendar grids to keep me on track.
I couldn’t function without it. I was working as a director of not one, but two statewide youth programs at a nonprofit. I had 25 remote staff members who supervised the nearly 200 kids in the programs. But those staff members didn’t work on the administrative tasks with me — I was on my own because we couldn’t afford to hire an assistant to help me. (Or rather, it was decided that we couldn’t afford that.)
I worked 50–60 hours a week and sometimes longer with very few instances of approved overtime and a gross salary of $37,000.
On the weekends, I sat at my cubicle desk, frantically flipping through my purple clipboard folder, highlighting items that had a rapidly approaching deadline, and adding yet more tasks to my lists.
I often felt invincibly productive thanks to my calendar system, but sometimes, I stumbled. I remember many meetings with my boss, in which I pathetically clutched that purple clipboard folder to my chest, tears threatening to spill out of my eyes, admitting that I just couldn’t keep up…
