Don’t Get Sucked into a Life of Toxic Productivity
Don’t Get Sucked into a Life of Toxic Productivity
Whenever someone asks you about your thriving business, do you outwardly beam with pride, yet internally feel a bit of regret and remorse? This is common with people who have sacrificed proper work-life balance in favor of success.
To everyone else, you seem to have it all – a growing income, a self-sufficient lifestyle – what more could anyone ask for? But you know the answer to that. You could ask for more free time to nurture your own needs.
You could have time to spend taking your spouse on a vacation, enjoy family dinners or playing golf with a good friend. But instead, you’re chained to a life of toxic productivity, which, by the way, isn’t always work-related.
While it is for most people, for some, that productivity extends to their personal life instead. They’re the kinds of people who have to make sure every square inch of their home is perfectly spotless 24/7, that their kids are overscheduled to the point of exhaustion, and more.
It’s easy to get drawn to this type of lifestyle because, for awhile, it makes you feel good. You’re not only doing something – you’re doing it well. You’re doing it better than most!
However, there comes a tipping point when the overachiever productivity turns into something toxic and unmanageable unless you’re willing to sacrifice other areas of your life.
So little by little, you allow it to steal you away from other things you love until one day you wake up and realize you’re trapped. What you once took pride in doing, you now dread.
But because it’s labeled as something productive and useful, you find it difficult to ease up on and give up. If it were something everyone viewed as toxic, you wouldn’t have any trouble abandoning it.
In order to remedy the situation without making a drastic change that everyone notices, do it in baby steps. Incremental changes where you reclaim your time and energy and devote them to something else that needs your attention would be better than one big change all at once.
Living a life filled with regrets that are based on the pretense of productivity is a sham no one wants to endure. It’s okay to evaluate your needs and do some course correcting whenever you see fit. That’s the sign of a healthy individual, not someone who is pretending to have it all together.