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Writer's pictureal_not_all

i’m “going all in” against toxic productivity

I recently finished my Ph.D. in psychology. I had been working for my entire academic career, it feels like, to get to this point. I had worked hard and sacrificed, all in favor of three little letters at the end of my name. Of course, reaching the end of my journey, a common question I get is “What are you doing next?” It’s anticipated that I’ll be seeking a post-doctoral fellowship, trying to land a tenure track position, or maybe doing research for a think tank or non-profit.


Imagine their surprise when my answer is “nothing.”


Okay, so not actually nothing. I am working, at a temporary position. But I wouldn’t say I am using my degree. And I don’t know that I intend to. For the foreseeable future, I will not be pursuing a career using my degree. More specifically, for the coming year, I have very few (less than three) goals related to career development and no intention of applying for post-doctoral fellowships or academic- and research-related positions.


Instead, I am using my time and energy to pursue hobbies and skills that I enjoy. The reason is a little more complicated than what I’m about to present here. However, the simple explanation is a word that’s developed into a bit of a buzzword, often tied to “self-care”: burnout. That’s right, I am burned the hell out. And the worst part was I didn’t even know how burned out I was.


My Story

I’ve been a student for 25 years of my life. It’s all I’ve ever known, pretty much. I graduated from college with the intent to do a Ph.D., then spent the next eight years in graduate school. I spent two years as a Master’s student and five years as a Ph.D. student (with a gap year in between where I was basically still a student, except I was teaching).


I defended my dissertation early in September of 2021, leaving me as a full-time student for three months. In a decision supported by my advisor, I had decided prior to my defense that after I defended, I would take a short break from research for the next three months. The thought was I would get a break from the productivity spiral that I had been in for the last eight years, take some time to decompress and focus on my health and wellbeing, and jump back into already planned projects in January. I had a number of papers, collaborations, and projects that I was intending to do once January began. What I didn’t expect was how I would feel once I put everything down.


I expected that I would feel happy, and maybe relief at defending my dissertation and being done. For the first few days, it was surreal, and not much changed. But the following week, when I was putting in few hours at work and focused my time and energy on developing my hobbies and interests outside of research, something happened. The best, most cliché, way to describe it is I felt the world’s biggest weight lifted off of me. It was like I had been trapped in a room that was shrinking by the minute, and suddenly, I was free. The freedom I felt was overwhelming. I finally had the time and space and energy to pursue things I loved and was interested in! I could try new things! I could do anything (within reason)!


In that week, all of the things I once loved but lost during my tenure as a student came rushing back. Between September and the end of December, I read upwards of 50 books for fun. I began hitting the gym more frequently. I played video games. I also was highly motivated to try things I had long been interested in, but didn’t think I had the time or space to do. I took a poetry class. I went rock climbing. I started writing for fun. In February, I am going skiing for my birthday, and taking a class on curling.


I hadn’t realized I had felt so trapped by my life as a graduate student; I thought I was doing fine. Clearly, I was not.


Once I had some distance and a chance to reflect on my experiences during my Ph.D., I began to realize that I wasn’t sure why I pursued my degree in the first place. For me, the degree was always the goal. It wasn’t a stepping stone into an academic position. I knew I didn’t want to pursue research full-time. It was hard for me to envision a future, continuing to do what I had always done, when I wasn’t sure what the goal was. I had gotten so caught up in my identity as a student, I couldn't fathom myself as anything else. Why was I working so hard without clear goals in mind? What were my goals going to be now that I was finished with school?


I also had a chance to reflect on why I didn’t pursue most hobbies or interests while in school. I remember thinking about trying new things or engaging in non-work activities and feeling trapped. I never felt like I had enough time and space to pursue anything other than work, even if I had free evenings or afternoons; it felt like I was in one of those rooms from cartoons and horror movies, a room that was closing in on itself. Thinking about doing something for fun made me feel anxious. I was constantly making excuses for why I didn’t want to try hobbies or do activities just because: I had to teach the next day, I had a long day or writing tomorrow, I had a meeting the next morning. It got to the point where I genuinely considered myself boring, because I did nothing but work. I assumed that this was just the way my life would be, and I had to make my peace with it. Little did I know I was caught in a trap.


That trap has a name. That trap is toxic productivity culture.


“Toxic Productivity”

In our capitalistic society, we put great emphasis on productivity. We should be doing everything we can to maximize our productivity, both in our jobs and outside of our jobs. We are inundated with articles and videos about how to be more organized, manage our time better, and produce more. New apps and websites emerge, eager to tout themselves as the best way to optimize your time and effort, streamline group collaboration, and improve your productivity. It’s a cultural obsession. This obsession has led to the rise of hustle culture, where people are encouraged to be producing and monetizing hobbies and interests outside of their primary job.


And worse, we come to equate our productivity and work with our own individual value. That is, we are only as valuable as the amount that we produce. Those who produce more are of higher value, held up as examples for us to aspire to be. Those who produce less are of lower value, and are considered lazy or selfish.

Although in our society it may seem like the most successful and creative people are constantly hustling, the research is clear that having both having hobbies and having down time are essential to wellbeing and creativity. An abundance of research shows that having hobbies, or leisure activities, promotes improve mental health and well-being, including decreased depression (e.g., Li et al., 2019). Furthermore, engaging in creative hobbies can help individuals to come up with more creative solutions to work problems (Eschleman et al., 2014). As if that wasn’t enough, having hobbies and leisure time outside of the workplace can lead to less perceived job stress (Sonnetag, Kuttler, & Fritz, 2010) and improved job performance (Binnewies, Sonnetag, & Mojza, 2010).


Of course, it’s not always a bad thing to focus on productivity. Setting goals and achieving them can be fulfilling in it’s own right. If you are focused on your career, and spend much of your time trying to optimize your productivity, that’s not inherently a bad thing. If you have a burgeoning side hustle that can earn you money, and you want to put time into that, amazing! It should also be noted that, in the system of late-stage capitalism, most people have no choice but to focus on work and hustling, just to pay the bills; the cost of living has drastically risen in the last decade, while wages have stayed stagnant.


However, our focus on productivity can turn from healthy to toxic.


Productivity turns toxic and poisons our lives when we put too much stock in the idea that our productivity is our only value. Productivity turns toxic when drive to produce costs you time with hobbies, self-care, friends, family, and relaxation.


This is what happened to me. Even though I wasn’t working 60+ hours a week, I was spending all my time and energy worrying about being productive. I would only save space for work. Even if I had time in which to pursue hobbies or cultivate friendships, I would fear that doing anything more strenuous than napping or watching TV would sap all my energy needed for my “real work.” I couldn’t understand why anyone would do something just because. I didn’t understand how people had the energy, or made the time. Compounding this was my perfectionism, which made me fear failure at hobbies and told me that if I couldn’t do something perfectly, it wasn’t worth doing. I was caught in a cycle of work, conserve energy for work, feel bad about not having hobbies or friends, work, conserve energy... you get the picture.

Although it seems simple to say I should have recognized this cycle, sucked it up, and decided to act, it didn’t feel possible for me. I had accepted that this was the way my life would be, centered around work. I truly believed I was boring, and was not meant to have hobbies or meaningful relationships. Until I finished my degree, took a break, and realized I was capable of so much more than just work.


I’m “Going All In” in Against Toxic Productivity

“Going all in” is used often in poker, describing a situation where you bet all your money on one hand. Colloquially, it means being fully committed to something, that you’re willing to give maximum effort to something.


When I hear “going all in,” I also think about fitness YouTuber Stephanie Buttermore’s journey to gain a healthier relationship with food; she went “all in” on eating, just about whatever she wanted, for months. She did this as a way to get back her satiety and fullness cues and curb the ever-present hunger she felt as a result of an overly restrictive diet. This idea about going all in on something, without limits, is kind of the inspiration for me to go all in on hobbies and interests, and trying new things beyond the tedium of my career.


So what does it mean for me to “go all in” against toxic productivity? For me, this means spending as much time as I can cultivating interests and pursuing activities that are not directly related to work and productivity. I am limiting the amount of time I spend working each week (within reason, I still need to pay my bills), saying “no” to new unpaid projects, and maximizing the time I spend doing things I enjoy or the time I spend with my loved ones. For me, going overboard on enjoying hobbies and interests was necessary, as I’ve spent my time in higher education solely focused on being perfect and reaching my next step (the What’s Next?). Like Stephanie lost her satiety cues and sense of fullness and hunger after eating, I lost my ability to enjoy things just because. I forgot how to do things for enjoyment, and to work towards goals that didn’t necessarily have a productive end. I had to learn to enjoy things again, just because, even if they would not help me in pursuit of career goals. Once I learn to enjoy things again, just because, I can figure out how to balance work and fun.


Now, this doesn’t mean that my life is now a hedonistic paradise where nothing productive is ever done, I have no goals, and I spend my time watching Netflix and eating bon bons. It just means that I have set firm boundaries around work, and have prioritized everything in my life that is not work. I have started to think about work as getting in the way of me enjoying my hobbies, instead of hobbies getting in the way of my work productivity. This is not easy. It has required a total mindset shift, and a lot of fighting against the guilt I feel when I say no to a project or a request from a colleague. I’ve also had to ensure that I have enough money to survive; I am still working, although my focus is not on my work.


As far as my work goes, I keep as few hours as I can while still being able to pay my bills. I understand that this may not be feasible to many people, and acknowledge the massive privilege it is to be able to work less now. I also don’t have any goals at my current job (besides earning money); I work as a research assistant on a grant that is outside my area of expertise. One of my boundaries is that I have not and will not pick up auxiliary projects related to that work that I have to do in my free time, like publishing papers, posters, or submitting grants.


I also set limits on the unpaid work that I do, such as publishing. While I still want to do some of this during the course of the year, I will only take on a couple new projects, and even then only if these projects do not detract from my hobbies and relationships. Work is just work for now, and I do not want to fall back into the cycle of toxic productivity. When I set my yearly goals at the start of 2022, I only set a couple of professional goals, and they were both things that I will have to do anyways.


Instead of focusing on work, I am focusing more on hobbies and interests. Almost all of my goals for the year have to do with my hobbies, or on personal challenges I need to overcome (drinking more water, always drinking more water 🤦🏼‍♀️). I make time each day to enjoy a couple of things. Some of these things include: writing for fun, working out/movement, rock climbing, reading for fun, playing video games, thrift shopping, spending time with my partner, spending time with my dogs.


I’ve also prioritized opportunities to try new things. Last fall I took a poetry class, and this winter I’m taking a short fiction class. At the end of the month, I’m going skiing for the first time, and trying to learn curling.

Ultimately, I want to prove to myself that I can have a fulfilling life, one filled with novelty and challenges, without it coming solely from work or my career. I spent so long thinking that I was just an academic, that my work was the most important and interesting part of me. My work was all that I was. But I’m much more than that. I am a “dog mom,” a queer woman, a partner, a sister, a daughter. I’m an academic, but also an amateur weightlifter and rock climber. I love movement, and am obsessed with trying new ways of moving. I’m a Sims 4 player, an expert assassin in Assassin’s Creed, and an avid reader. I’m a thrifting wizard, and I love to dance (even if I'm not good at it).


Maybe eventually I will find a healthier balance, where I can worry more about productivity and make time for all of the things I enjoy. I would love to be able to find a fulfilling job that would also allow me to retain the other facets of my identity, without getting lost in the void of toxic productivity that tells me that I am my job and my value is what I produce. However, until then, I’m going all in against the toxic productivity I’ve experienced for as long as I can remember.

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