Finding it hard to feel productive?
Organised Agonisers! Graham here.
Getting things done. It’s hard at the best of times. Right now it’s reached ‘near impossible’ status.
Many of us can’t work the way we used to - whether because our work setting has radically changed, or because our work has disappeared altogether.
Add to this the sheer amount of ‘holy shit is this really happening?’ things going on right now, and a relentless news-and-social-media vortex designed to keep you watching day and night.
It’s a lot, is what I’m saying. Understandably, it’s a hard time to feel productive.
Yet for many big feelers, feeling ‘productive’ is an important part of feeling like a worthy human - especially when other parts of our lives feel like they are in disarray.
So what do you do with that?
The dreaded P word
It’s almost a cliche. Feeling unworthy? Work harder! 'Maybe if I was just more productive, I wouldn't feel like such a piece of shit. . .?'
You can look at this a couple of different ways.
You can say that striving to ‘be productive’ is a coping strategy, a way of distracting from (or pushing against) the thoughts and feelings that tell us we’re not good enough. From this angle, this endless striving to ‘be productive’ is doomed to diminishing returns, because it doesn’t address the real underlying problem, that feeling of unworthiness.
From another angle though, you can argue that throwing yourself into work isn’t so much a coping strategy as it is just a ‘life strategy’. Meaning doesn’t come easy in life - especially for those of us inclined to repeatedly ask just what is the point of it all.
From this angle, it makes sense to at least try to find meaning and purpose in your work, especially at those times when your brain, when left to its own devices, is a bit of a scary place.
When working harder is helpful
Whatever you want to call it, the ‘be more productive’ strategy has its strengths and weaknesses.
Sometimes, getting things done is just what you need to give you a sense of accomplishment and baseline worthiness. Sometimes when I find myself a few days into a long shame spiral, wondering why I’m even here, the simple act of getting some work done can have a surprisingly big effect on my mood.
The more uncomfortable the task, the more profound the transformation once I get it done.
For instance, I just took on a small bit of unpaid and quite challenging work, trying to influence a large mental health reform process in Australia. The task involves a few nerve-wracking meetings with people in positions of influence, meetings that I’ll spend ages preparing for and agonising over afterward (as is my process). And to top it off, I’m not convinced my efforts in this instance will lead to any real change.
In short, I added a bunch of work to my plate, for no clear benefit to me or the cause I’m working for. Perfect!
Yet so far the process has been a nourishing one. A chance to remind myself of some of the things I’m really good at. At a time when my otherwise pared-back daily routine has left me wondering what I’m here for, I can point to this extra work and say ‘see? Not totally wasting my days away.’
When working harder doesn’t help
But sometimes this drive to work harder doesn’t address the underlying issue.
For whatever reason, some of us spend days (or weeks, or months) truly convinced that we are not good enough. Sometimes when you’re in that space, working harder doesn’t make you feel more worthy, it just makes you feel more tired.
I think there are two main reasons for this.
1 - It’s often harder to actually get things done when you’re feeling shit. (What?!) Big feelings are a full-time second job, people (and the pay is terrible).
2 - Even when you do manage to get things done, it doesn’t necessarily address the feeling of unworthiness. Sometimes it even has the opposite effect.
Sometimes, even as you are working harder than ever, you may find yourself caring less and less about the work you’re doing. Work isn’t a refuge of meaning and purpose so much as an increasingly difficult game of pretend, where your main aim is to hide just how much of a failure you’ve become.
Crucially, the game of pretend is a game you can’t win. When you’re convinced you are a Deep-down Forever Failure, the more successfully you pretend things are fine, the more evidence you have of just how full of shit you must be.
(Lovely.)
You can probably see the vicious cycle brewing here:
Feel unworthy → work harder → feel exhausted → have less in the tank to deal with all that noise in your brain → get less done → feel even more unworthy.
Giving myself a break (kind of)
These last few months, I’ve been trying to make peace with the fact that I’m not actually getting a whole lot done lately, by my previous standards.
Some of this is related to the pandemic - there’s simply less work on. But my current low-energy, slower daily routine is also the legacy of a long, slow process of burning out over the past two years.
I can see all the factors that have led me here, but I still struggle with feeling ‘not productive enough’.
It’s like I’m halfway to giving myself a break. I can see the many good reasons for being less productive, but I can’t yet escape the guilt and other ‘not enough’ feelings that swirl around it.
Naming where you’re at
Part of my response to this is to take on extra tasks like I described above - projects that might not be paid but still give me a sense of contribution, of ‘doing’. But there’s another piece of the puzzle here.
Part of me is more than ready to ‘do less’, after a hectic last two years. Nonetheless, maybe I’m not yet ready to fully embrace that, guilt-free. So instead, I’m trying to see if I can least name where I’m at. ‘Doing less, feeling guilty.’
When I decide to take the day off (because I'm not getting much done anyway) and those nagging ‘not enough’ thoughts come up, I’m trying not to get in an argument with them. Instead, I’m simply naming them: ‘ah... productivity thoughts... guilt.’ I do this in as friendly a tone I can muster, like greeting an old friend.
It doesn’t make the thoughts and feelings go away, but it can sometimes create a little more space around them.
Plan for the day you’re actually going to have
Then there’s the practical question of how you plan your day when you’re not getting much done.
Whether you have less on your plate right now, or whether you have plenty of things you should be doing but can’t quite bring yourself to do, your approach to daily-planning can be key.
I’ve heard from dozens of Big Feelers describing how busy they are supposed to be right now, yet not being able to get things done the way they’re used to - because of the change in working conditions. Because of the state of the world. Because of the state of their minds.
One thing I’m finding useful is to plan for the day I’m actually going to have, rather than the day I think I’m supposed to have. This means, each day, deliberately putting less on my to-do list than I think I should.
Here’s the thing about daily-planning. Less is more.
9AM You, all hyped up on caffeine, thinks they can do everything.
When I plan my day on a Monday morning, coffee in hand, I will, without fail, write down an entire week’s worth of tasks for that day (and still wonder if I should squeeze in a few more).
I have learned not to trust 9AM Graham. He is a daily-planning nightmare.
And guess what? 9AM Graham is not going to be around to actually do most of the work he lays out for me each morning. He’ll help with the first bit, for sure. His wave of caffeine optimism will be quite useful till about midday, but then things get handed off to Afternoon Graham, an altogether different animal.
So for years, my daily pattern has gone something like this. Overpromise in the morning, crash in the afternoon. Then convince myself I’m just taking a little break to steel myself for the many items still staring at me from that day’s to-do list, before finally admitting defeat, and sweeping them all over to tomorrow’s list (ready to do it all again).
It’s a trap!
I have recently figured out there is a trap built into my daily planning routine.
A structural imbalance.
Each day I am making my daily plan at my most optimistic, my most full-of-energy. Then, at the end of each day, when I’m reviewing my accomplishments (or lack of them) I am at my lowest ebb, my most pessimistic.
So there’s a fundamental mismatch between the person setting the criteria for a good day (Optimistic 9AM Me) and the person judging how the day actually went (Pessimistic Afternoon Me).
It’s a recipe for feeling that I’m never getting anything worthwhile done, even when I actually have.
So I am trying to balance the playing field a little.
Newfound restraint
I could plan my day the night before - let Pessimistic Afternoon Graham set the terms for what’s realistically doable in a day. But let's be honest, Pessimistic Afternoon Graham doesn’t really want to do anything, including daily-planning.
So I still write my to-do list in the morning, but I’m trying to be much more skeptical about the list I come up with. Ideally, I’ll only write down two or three tasks, tops. To encourage this newfound restraint, I tell myself I can always add more items once that list is done (and I almost never do).
It doesn’t mean I magically feel more productive-and-therefore-worthy, but it does load the dice a little. When the day is over, I’m trying to make it more likely I end up feeling good about the day, rather than hung-up on all the things I haven’t done.
Guilt-free redrafting
It’s not a perfect strategy. As I write this, I’ve written down 7 things to do today. (Coffee is a powerful drug people.)
It’s 3pm and I’m still on number 1 - ‘write this newsletter’. Afternoon Graham is looking at the rest of the list and feeling increasingly tense and itchy about how long item 1 is taking.
So I have another trick up my sleeve, for this inevitable situation. I get to redraft my day’s to-do list as the day unfolds.
As I do each task on my list, I cross it off - a moment of triumph in a chaotic world. But now, that’s not the only option. At any point during my day, I can also just take things off the list altogether, if I realised I’ve overloaded myself.
The strangely calming power of [square brackets]
I do this by putting little square brackets around the items I’m deciding not to do today. It's short-hand for, ‘not today’.
At the end of the day (or whenever Afternoon Graham decides his brain is full and clocks off) I count any items in square brackets as little wins too. Sure, I’ll still probably have to do them at some point - but today I can trust that I gave them fair consideration and simply decided not to do them.
(The square brackets are also a useful way of tracking which items I keep putting on my list and not doing, which often prompts some useful reflection for me. After a few days I get to ask, ‘do I actually need to do this? Is there a smaller step I can take on this one?’)
You may have different tricks up your sleeve for dealing with the 'not good enough' feelings that swirl around work (or a lack of work). Tricks you've no doubt learned from years of trial and error, like me. Tricks that sometimes help and sometimes don't.
There's one last thing I'm trying to hold onto, which is simply this. That all that noise in our heads around productivity comes from a deep and sincere desire. To be useful. To contribute. It's just that, like all of us, that well-intentioned inner voice can over-do it sometimes, try too hard, bite off more than it can chew.
And we know what that feels like right?
It's now almost 4pm. I've spent all day on this newsletter and there are still 6 things staring at me from my to-do list.
Time to break out the square brackets.
Hey how are you relating to the dreaded P word, ‘productivity’, right now?
I’d love to hear what you’re finding challenging, and anything you’re finding useful. Let me know using this here form :)
New podcast out on this very subject!
We just popped a new podcast in the Big Feels Club pod feed. It’s about chronic fatigue and big feelings - something both Honor and our guest Gareth Edwards have dealt with.
You’ll hear us talk about productivity in general, and how to still feel like a worthy human even when you have to ‘do’ less.
Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts, or search ‘Big Feels Club’ in most podcast players. (But, as one listener recently pointed out, not Spotify. That one's a work-in-progress.)
News for health professionals
Remember Big Feels @ Work, our audio resource for mental health professionals with their own big feelings?
We’re now opening that up to anyone who wants to check it out. It’s all on Soundcloud, and it’s all free!
Big Feels @ Work is designed for mental health professionals, but it may also be useful if you work in general health and other ‘helping’ sectors. If you just want to have a stickybeak, check out the full list of episodes here on our Soundcloud, including the latest episode, all about how people are managing the productivity + feelings equation under the pandemic.
