If it’s up to you alone to get more done, then attempts to moderate your workload can be misinterpreted as laziness.
The Frustration with Productivity Culture
Has anyone called you lazy for taking a break or distributing your workload such that you can still have time to be human?
I remember being told by someone who barely sleeps every day and doing overtime that “it’s normal not to do anything but work.”
If it’s what I ought to become to be productive at work, then I want to get my life back instead of just going through the motions.
My definition of work isn’t becoming an unfeeling cog in the machine. Rather, it’s the kind of work that creates a change I really want to participate in. Although, perhaps, you already felt like a cog of the machine in the name of productivity.
If yes, here’s something from a good read The Frustration with Productivity Culture:
When you ask individuals to optimize productivity, this more-is-more reality pits the professional part of their life against the personal. More output is possible if you’re willing to steal hours from other parts of your day—from family dinners, or relaxing bike rides—so the imperative to optimize devolves into a game of internal brinkmanship. This is an impossibly daunting and fraught request, and yet we pretend that it’s natural and straightforward. It’s hard enough to optimize a factory, and a factory doesn’t have to worry about getting home in time for school pickups.
Sometimes we wonder when it’s okay not to work.
Perhaps, we just want to be human.
That instead of being maximized for activity, we can enjoy the little things (or even run our personal errands) without the dread of being called lazy in our highly “productive culture.”
jessa 