You Are More Than Your Productivity

If a day only counts when you got enough done, you are grading yourself on a test that never ends. There is another way to keep score.

Notice how you answer "how was your day?" If the honest answer is a list of what you finished, or an apology for what you did not, you are in good company.

Many women measure a day by its output. Productive day, good person. Slow day, something is wrong with me. A sick day feels like a moral failure. A vacation takes three days to stop feeling like truancy.

Getting things done is satisfying, and the people who depend on you are lucky to have you. The trouble starts when your sense of being a worthwhile person is riding on the list. That is a fragile place to keep it.

What happens when worth depends on performance

Psychologist Jennifer Crocker of the University of Michigan has studied what she calls the bases of self-worth: the things people feel they have to be or do in order to be okay.

In research described by the American Psychological Association, Crocker surveyed more than 600 college freshmen three times over their first year. More than 80 percent said they based their self-worth on academic competence.

Students who staked their worth on external sources, including appearance, approval from others, and academic performance, reported more stress, anger, academic problems, and relationship conflicts.

Here is the part that should get the attention of every high achiever. Students who based their self-worth on academic performance studied more hours, and did not get higher grades. Crocker's view was that putting your worth on the line does not help performance. It adds anxiety and the threat of failure to every task.

Those were students and grades. Swap in a clean house, a cleared inbox, or a perfect performance review, and the mechanism is easy to recognize. When every task is a referendum on you, every task gets heavier.

Students who based their worth on internal sources, such as being a virtuous person or living by their moral standards, fared better. Crocker's suggestion was to aim at something larger than your own self-esteem: what you can create or contribute.

The bar keeps rising

If it feels like "enough" has moved over your lifetime, the data agrees.

Researchers Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill analyzed data from 41,641 American, Canadian, and British college students collected between 1989 and 2016. In findings published by the American Psychological Association, all three types of perfectionism they measured went up.

The steepest climb was in what they call socially prescribed perfectionism, the sense that other people expect you to be perfect. It rose by 33 percent. Self-oriented perfectionism, the demand you place on yourself, rose by 10 percent.

Curran connects the trend to a culture that pushes people to strive, perform, and achieve, and to compare themselves with each other.

So some of what you feel is not a personal failing. It is the water you are swimming in. That does not fix it, but it may help you stop blaming yourself for feeling it.

When productivity turns on you

Harvard Health Publishing uses the term toxic productivity for an obsessive preoccupation with being productive at all costs, paired with never feeling that what you did was enough. It is not a diagnosable condition. Clinical psychologist Natalie Dattilo, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, describes it as internal pressure to be productive at all times, at the expense of your mental or physical well-being.

She lists three warning signs:

• A false sense of urgency. You are always rushing to the next thing and feel you can slow down only when everything is done.

• An inability to relax. Every free moment should be filled, and a break feels like a waste.

• Guilt or shame about not accomplishing enough. One undone item on the list feels destabilizing.

Dattilo considers the third the most destructive, describing guilt and shame as a pathway to anxiety and depression. She names insomnia, anxiety, and depression as the leading mental health effects.

She also makes an observation about women that is worth pausing on. The signs may be harder to spot in women, because moving from one thing to the next, coordinating rides and packing lunches and jumping on calls, just feels like what we do.

In other words, the culture hands women this pattern and then calls it being a good mom, a good employee, a good daughter.

If those three signs describe most of your days, or your mood and sleep have been suffering for a while, it is worth raising with your doctor or a licensed therapist.

What a good life is actually built on

Here is a different measuring stick.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development had followed people for nearly 80 years when the Harvard Gazette reported on it in 2017, beginning with 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 and later adding hundreds of Boston city residents and participants' wives. It is one of the longest studies of adult life ever run. A caveat: the original groups were all men, though the findings are widely discussed as applying more broadly.

According to the Harvard Gazette, the study found that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy over their lives. Those ties were better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or genes.

Director Robert Waldinger reported that the people most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.

Nothing in that decades-long study suggests anyone turned out healthier because their inbox was at zero. The things that held up over a lifetime were about connection, not output.

Take a worth inventory

This exercise takes ten minutes and tends to be clarifying.

Step 1. Finish this sentence five times, quickly, without editing: "I feel like a good person when I ______."

Step 2. Mark each answer: - D if it depends on doing or achieving (finished the list, kept the house clean, got praised at work) - A if it depends on approval (they were pleased, nobody was upset with me) - B if it is about who you are or how you treat people (I was honest, I was kind, I showed up)

Step 3. Count. If most of your answers are D and A, your worth is on a subscription plan that has to be renewed daily.

Step 4. Write three B statements that are true no matter what you got done today. For example: - "I am someone who keeps her word." - "I am a person my friends can tell the truth to." - "I love my people well, even on days I am short-tempered."

Put those where you will see them. They are true on your least productive day, which is the point.

Change how you keep score

You do not have to stop caring about getting things done. You just need more than one column.

Replace the day-end question. Instead of "what did I get done?", try one of these:

• Instead of: What did I get done?

  • Ask: Who did I connect with today?

• Instead of: Was I productive?

  • Ask: Did I act like the person I want to be?

• Instead of: What is still undone?

  • Ask: What did I enjoy, even for a minute?

• Instead of: Did I earn my rest?

  • Ask: What did my body need today, and did it get it?

Set an "enough" line in the morning. Before the day starts, choose the two or three things that will make today enough. When they are done, the day is a success. Anything more is extra, not owed.

Introduce yourself differently. For one week, when someone asks about you, lead with something other than your job or your kids' schedule. "I am learning to bake bread." "I am rereading a book I loved at twenty."

Practice a sentence for slow days. "I did less today, and I am the same person I was yesterday." It will feel untrue at first. Say it anyway.

Separate what you do from what you are worth, out loud. When you catch yourself saying "I was so lazy today," restate it as fact: "I rested today." No verdict attached.

A note on the people who benefit

There is one more thing worth saying plainly. A woman who believes her worth equals her usefulness is very convenient for everyone around her. She says yes. She fills gaps. She does not ask for much.

Untangling your worth from your output may cause some friction. People may notice that you are less available. That is not a sign you are doing it wrong.

You were a whole person before you did anything for anyone today.

Try this today

• Do the worth inventory. Five sentences, ten minutes. Write your three B statements on a sticky note.

• Set tomorrow's "enough" line tonight. Two or three things. When they are done, stop grading.

• Ask a different question at dinner. Skip "what did you get done?" and ask "what was the best part of your day?" Answer it yourself, too.

You are not a to-do list with a pulse. This is your day, too.

Sources

• American Psychological Association, "Self-esteem that's based on external sources has mental health consequences, study says," Monitor on Psychology

• American Psychological Association, "Perfectionism among young people significantly increased since 1980s, study finds"

• Harvard Health Publishing, "Beyond the grind: Toxic productivity and how it sabotages your well-being"

• Harvard Gazette, "Over nearly 80 years, Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life"