Toxic productivity in times of (light) lockdown
In other words, toxic productivity. Certainly in these times when we do not have full agendas with coffee dates, dinners and Friday afternoon drinks, many people feel the pressure – including feeling restless – to make themselves useful. Old trusted routines have been dropped, leaving more free time. Time where you have to get the most out of.
From taking up a new hobby to extremely sweating in the gym. You can see that there is a lot of ‘must’ involved. This continuous urge to always be productive and ‘on’ can take on unhealthy forms. Harmful to yourself and your daily life. Something that often creeps in over time.
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3 signs of toxic productivity
People who have to contend with toxic productivity often recognize themselves in (a mix of) the following three characteristics:
1: Working so many hours that it harms your health and / or personal relationships
There is nothing wrong with being a hard worker with a lot of persistence and determination. When work takes precedence over your basic needs, such as the lunch break, drinking enough, getting enough sleep and your personal hygiene, the work-life ratio is out of balance. Tunnel vision that can be detrimental to yourself and your loved ones in the long run.
2: Have unrealistic expectations
The second characteristic of toxic productivity is creating unrealistic expectations for yourself. Certainly in times of crisis, now that our lives look very different, you simply cannot always check off the same amount of to do’s from yourself as what you would do in times for corona. If you try to continuously expect that from yourself, you will increase your stress level.
3: Difficulty doing nothing and silence
If you have a love-hate relationship with wanting to be productive, it can be damn hard to watch Netflix for hours, for example. Because yes, that is wasted, non-productive time, right? Although the thought initially appealed to you, it ultimately left you with a restless I-have-to-do feeling. Once there is of course nothing wrong with this, but if you talk about it all the time, we speak of toxic productivity.
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Tips on how to break through toxic productivity
If you recognize yourself in one or more points and you want to change something about your toxic productivity, then according to experts you can get started with a few simple tips. What you can think about:
- Agree with yourself not to open the laptop or touch the PC after dinner. As soon as you sit down to dinner, give yourself a free evening.
- Determine for yourself from what time you want to mute your phone and put it out of sight. And what if something comes from work? Tomorrow is a new day, otherwise they can always call you urgently!
- At the start of the working week, make an agreement with yourself how many hours you want to spend on work. And now it comes, try to stick to it.
- Give yourself – especially now that we have been indoors for so many hours – the time to take a nice long afternoon walk. Get some fresh air, so that you can get back to work full of energy (and concentration) afterwards. Nobody is going to type faster from sitting non-stop at the PC all day long. Building in breaks is essential.
- Ensure yourself the night’s rest that your body and mind need every day. Working until late at night and then being ‘on’ again at 7:00 am will not benefit anyone’s productivity.
- And finally, think about where you – besides your nocturnal zzz ‘- are charging further from. What gives you energy? Try to weave these things into your working days. This is the only way to get the most out of it!
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