“Sleep is for the weak”: it’s time we address the toxic link between productivity & self-worth
Tags: Work Life Balance, Covid 19, Burnout, Capitalism, Productivity

For me, prioritising my mental health over the false hope of ever thriving whilst slowly burning out felt like a big middle finger to the capitalist system I found myself tangled in. But after leaving my job, I couldn’t quite figure out how to fully untangle those knots and be rid of it. After two weeks of not working, I started getting this unsettling feeling of guilt. I felt guilty for choosing not to work while unemployed people had tirelessly been applying for months, without any success. Most of all, I felt lazy and worthless knowing that I didn’t currently amount to anything.

Is this a surprise given that we tend to put hustlers, the movers and shakers, the girl bosses on a pedestal? To always be up to something, to move up, to grind, this is now what enjoys prestige. And despite knowing better I embraced this mentality because my hard work made me feel like was appreciated by my bosses and indispensable to the company. Now I know that if they truly valued me, they would have taken the work off my shoulders and helped me manage my burn-out.

Soon after countries all over the world closed their borders and cities went in lockdown, some of the viral conversations were not about how scary the virus was, but about what one could achieve with all this extra time at the house. Inspirational quotes laced with toxic productivity started popping up the Gram:

“This is the perfect opportunity to start that project you’ve always dreamed of. No more excuses”.

Instead of giving ourselves some downtime to rest and process what the hell was going on around us, and later perhaps grief about lives lost (including life as we knew it), we were led to believe the lockdown was much better spent to start our side business, write that book and leave no minute wasted. And if you do start a hobby? Figure out how to make money from it anyway.

Can we blame those that glorify ‘the grind’, when this obsession with productivity, in essence, is a byproduct of capitalism?

Historically, labourers were highly skilled craftspeople and would gain a sense of accomplishment seeing their product come to life from beginning to end. During the Industrial Era, when human hands were replaced by factories and machines, this was no longer the case. To keep workers motivated, new values were cultivated from the emulation of those machines: efficient, unrelenting and dynamic. In short: the more we work like machines, the more we feel like we’re thriving. It’s not a coincidence that we’re obsessed with learning about Bill Gate’s morning routine and the App Store has a ‘Productivity’ category.

The lockdown has divided the nation into two camps: those who prefer working from home, and those who long to return to the office. I’ve often heard team Office say things like: “I just don’t feel I’m as productive at home, sometimes I just play games on my phone for 20 minutes straight.” like they’re deserving of capital punishment. Taking breaks and losing your focus and procrastinating is completely normal and shouldn’t make you feel bad. Working 10 hours interrupted, skipping lunch and ignoring your personal needs is machine-like behaviour and needs to stop.

So, capitalism and productivity can be considered two sides of the same coin. It also explains why we only consider paid labour being productive and deserving of praise. I’m not actually twiddling my thumbs all day (although I binge-watched Emily In Paris faster than I’d like to admit). I took an online course on sustainability, cooked, cleaned the house, helped a friend with her thesis… none of which are considered ‘working’. However, people that we pay to clean our house we call domestic workers, people that we pay to cook are called chefs, and people we pay to help us with our academic endeavours are called tutors. Not to mention the unpaid work carried out by parents and caregivers (mostly women) Make it make sense.