What is toxic productivity and how do you deal with it?

Are you working a long 12-hour day? Do you turn down invites from friends, neglect doctor appointments, or joke about taking a break from exercising? Are there times when you feel like going out and letting loose, but when you decide to go, something about your current projects crosses your mind? If you always feel agitated by the idea of ​​not following others and staying on top of your game every day by pushing yourself, it’s time to consider hitting pause. Nowadays, people glorify the idea of ​​a hustle culture where people believe in working tirelessly to achieve success. But what we all fail to realize is how detrimental toxic productivity or workaholism can be to our overall health.

What is toxic productivity?

Toxic productivity can be described as an irresistible and uncontrollable urge to be productive at all times and at all costs. Be aware that this can be detrimental to your mental and physical health. You may be considered to be engaged in toxic productivity if you feel pressured to be productive and busy all the time and feel guilty while enjoying resting or ‘doing nothing’. Your productivity can be termed toxic if you prioritize work at the expense of your mental and physical health and even your relationships.

Productivity is good, but when productivity becomes so great that it affects your relationships and health, it becomes toxic. Everything is good when it is in balance to some extent.

Sometimes people become workaholics out of guilt for slacking off and not achieving their goals. Having very high expectations of oneself and setting unrealistic goals also leads to a person becoming work-oriented, which can be extremely detrimental to one’s health and can lead to issues such as burnout, anxiety or depression. This leads to toxic productivity, explains psychologist and psychotherapist Priyanka Kapoor.

Warning Signs of Toxic Productivity

Some warning signs of toxic productivity include:

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• Too many project commitments or working extra hours
• Only undertake productive activities that have a clear purpose
• Deprioritizing self-care
• Feelings of guilt about not getting enough work done
• Choose quantity over quality
• Finding it difficult to disconnect
• Rely heavily on willpower to complete tasks
• Feeling of burnout, chronic anxiety or depression

Why Can Toxic Productivity Be Harmful to Your Health?

When we work overtime on a regular basis, it not only affects our mental health, but it can also harm our relationships, physical health, growth, and productivity. Here are some ways toxic productivity can hinder the quality of our lives:

1. Can affect relationships

Toxic productivity can affect your relationships with your staff, seniors, and family. With longer working hours and high expectations, you may become upset when those expectations are not met, leading to the development of negative feelings and attitudes. You may also gradually lose empathy and focus only on your goals, ignoring the needs of others. This will eventually lead to more problems with your mental and physical health, says the expert. While we are too focused on our work, we try to push everything aside, even our close relationships. Due to extreme stress, we tend to become cold towards the feelings of everyone around us.

2. Personal growth

When we are only focused on getting everything done professionally, everything else in life takes a back seat, even our most sought-after hobbies. Leisure activities, learning something new, meditation, self-reflection or any other higher purpose in life can also be neglected when there is toxic productivity and that will eventually affect your health.

3. Physical health

Extreme work leads to overuse of our minds and chronic stress can manifest as physical symptoms in our bodies. “People who are stuck in the cycle of toxic productivity can develop sleep deprivation, high blood pressure, addiction, hypertension or diabetes due to too much work stress,” says the expert.

Also read: 5 Alarming Signs Your Workplace Is Harmful to Your Mental Health

4. Increasing loneliness

Toxic productivity also makes many people feel lonely because they don’t have time to delve into relationships and are only focused on achieving goals. Although such people achieve success in their professional life, their personal life gets disrupted and neglected, which creates a rift in their close relationships. This in turn affects their mental and physical health.

How do you break through toxic productivity?

When you live an uncertain life, it’s easy to channel discomfort into being productive. However, this approach doesn’t do anything good in the long run and can lead to issues like burnout or constant fatigue. As humans, our bodies need rest to deal with our emotions and stay connected to our loved ones. And when you give yourself this gift of time, you’ll find that more creativity and positive energy will flow into your life, bringing you closer to success in the long run.

Below we describe 6 effective ways to break the cycle of toxic productivity:

1. Physical health

When you make time for yourself, it will pay you back in the form of good health. And anyone who enjoys good physical health will be able to work harder and achieve more in life. Make sure you prioritize your physical health, such as diet and exercise like yoga, meditation or going to the gym, which increases positive hormones and resilience, the expert suggests.

2. Establish clear work boundaries

Always set clear boundaries when it comes to work. Toxic productivity always makes you work hard for hours without numbers. To break that cycle, you need to learn to set boundaries and reclaim your free time. Always have specific work hours, and this is even more important when working remotely.

After your work hours, make it a point to leave all the unnecessary work for the coming day there and go home to relax. Leave your work energy at the workplace and when you come back home, go in with a fresh mind with the right intention to spend quality time with your loved ones.

Also read: 9 Ways to Deal with a Toxic Boss During the Pandemic, According to a Psychologist

3. Expectations

Having very high expectations of yourself and others is also not a good idea. Having realistic goals based on the time, place or circumstances of your staff or yourself is very important. Just like you, your staff will also be flawed and mistakes on their part are inevitable. Don’t dwell on the mistakes, instead look for solutions and implement them. Motivate your staff to do better and let go of trivial mistakes. Set strict limits on your working hours and physical capacity.

4. Positive thinking styles

Many people want to be the best and if they can’t do that, they feel like they haven’t done enough. Until they haven’t worked very hard or hit the benchmark, they feel anxious. That’s why they work harder. That’s called imposter syndrome. It’s also called the black-and-white thinking style. People need to break this style by understanding that the whole world works on shades of gray, it’s okay not to be perfect, the expert believes

5. Therapy

Psychotherapy also sometimes helps them to balance their lives and break the pattern of imposter syndrome and addiction to work. Therapy techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) help to find the root cause of such behavior through ‘talk therapy’. A professional helps you to restructure your thought patterns and the behaviors that result from them to help you find a work-life balance.

6. Emotional regulation

Working on the underlying issues that are causing someone to work too much is also crucial. Sometimes to get some respite from mental health or relationship issues, people turn to workaholism, which leads to toxic productivity. Underlying bad emotions such as fear of failure, imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, guilt about not being able to achieve enough, insecurity about work, comparison or stress in personal life can build up inside you and trigger the behavior or toxic productivity.