Are we all secretly suffering from ‘productivity shame’?

It’s been hard to shift my feelings of shame around productivity, or a lack of it.

For many of us, our relationship with our output in life is so deeply ingrained. My relationship with productivity has swung around almost 180 degrees. In my twenties, I would see resting as shameful so I was constantly busy; now, ten years later, I see workaholism as shameful and that I shouldn’t be so busy. Whatever way I look at it, I have to check in with myself and stop shaming myself.

The idea of perfect ‘balance’ is also a myth. I don’t want to be embarrassed about my intense stints of productivity, or ashamed of them. And I don’t want to be embarrassed by or ashamed of the fact that I now take August and December entirely off work to rest and travel, either.

It’s as though whatever way we slice it, we can always make ourselves feel like we’re doing it wrong in someone else’s eyes. This is why it’s so important to trust yourself and make sure you are doing what feels right for you. We all have different limits, lives and goals.

My relationship with productivity has been an interesting one to uncover.

Talking with friends, a therapist and a life coach revealed why I always had to be busy, and why I didn’t feel worthy of rest. For me, it’s a combination of schooling, my personality, my fears (and being a millennial, probably).

“I wonder whether some of us missed the memo that ‘working hard’ doesn’t mean giving yourself a nervous breakdown…”

Every generation has a complex relationship with work and rest, but millennials graduated into a recession; there was a very strong fear that you would be homeless and jobless if you didn’t work extremely hard as jobs were limited, but I wonder whether some of us missed the memo that ‘working hard’ doesn’t mean giving yourself a nervous breakdown.

My first session with my life coach approached this head-on, and there was no messing around. When I spoke to her about my work, my career and my creativity, I used phrases like: ‘I have to get on with it’, ‘I have to nail it down’ and ‘I’ll make myself get on top of it’. The language was quite aggressive and unforgiving, as though I was using it as a stick to beat myself with. Clearly, I was someone who used to see breaks or rest or days off as weakness, and it was a long road to learning a different way. And many of my peers clearly felt the same.

Author Abigail Bergstrom wrote openly about her burnout experience, in a Times article in 2022. She explained that her old ‘busy’ life looked successful to the outside world, packed out with back-to-back meetings:

“In my old life every ticking minute was accounted for from the moment I opened my eyes. I’d combine a walk to the Tube with a client call, and a trip to get a bikini wax with an opportunity to order those Mother’s Day flowers and book a table. Each action was multitasked, every half-hour slot blocked out in my diary.”

Abigail had done everything ‘right’: she was productive, she had a busy diary, she was young, she was successful. And yet: she wasn’t listening to the signs from her body, until one day it took over for her, and forced her to become bed-bound for months.

“The body gives us warning signs, and if we ignore them, then it forces us to stop.”

Burnout demands rest. The body gives us warning signs, and if we ignore them, then it forces us to stop.