4/25/24 Toxic Productivity and How to Avoid It
What is the purpose of this podcast? To encourage people by sharing.
Live intro with hook - Hello my lovelies. Welcome to the Moving Toward Better Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Bemmes, and Today we’re talking about Toxic Productivity and how to avoid it which may seem counterintuitive to what we’ve been talking about the past several weeks, but I assure you that I’ll explain why we’re doing this, and I think it will make sense to you.
What inspired this podcast was a song I listened to for the first time this week, it’s a play off the song 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton and Pitbull (link is in the show notes) , and while I love the song, some of it makes me cringe because it almost glorifies working ourselves half to death, barely getting by and overdoing everything in the pursuit of money.
There’s a line that talks about working 9 to 5 and then 5 to 9, which is what made me think about toxic productivity and why it’s important to avoid it.
Please do not misunderstand me. I know we need money to survive and thrive, and so many people struggle to get by these days, but if we spend all of our time working without ever taking time to do the things that bring us joy, life becomes even more difficult, so let’s talk about it.
The thing is that I teach productivity, and I love being productive, but a huge part of why I love being productive is that it gives me the opportunity to be spontaneous too because when I can focus for part of the time to get my work done, I get to play when I’m offered opportunities or someone calls unexpectedly.
It took me a long time to understand that consistent productivity in small amounts allowed for spontaneous, unexpected and expected fun and joy, which I’ll explain in a bit, but the thing about productivity is that it gives every personality type the opportunity to do more of what they love, and that makes for happier human beings, and we could all use more of that.
For those who are new to the podcast, when I talk about personalities, communication and relationships, I use the DISC personality model of behavior and refer to people as D or Driven, I or Inspired, S or Supportive, and C or Cautious. You can find links to take your own Personality Assessment in the Show Notes.
As we always do, we’re starting with the D personality, and you are the personality that can experience toxic productivity by doing too dang much and not knowing when to quit. Listen, I know how much you love being productive, and you’re very good at it, but as they say all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl, and you definitely don’t want to be dull. You want to be badass, but as much as you love being productive, you definitely have a point that your productivity excellence starts to wane, and that’s usually when you get frustrated by the mistakes you or someone else is making, and it makes you want to say many bad words and hurt people.
I’m sure most of you know the story of the ax, but if you don’t, let me give you the cliff notes. There is a story of two lumberjacks and their job is to chop wood with an ax into smaller pieces. One lumberjack disappears for an hour each day, and yet, he’s the one who always chops more wood. The other lumberjack is really frustrated by this and asks him how he works less and accomplishes more, and the original lumberjack says that every day, he leaves to sharpen his ax so he can be more productive.
For the D personality, that’s a very good lesson to learn. Your version of sharpening your ax may look different, but that’s ok too. For some of my clients, they sharpen their ax by making sure they exercise every day. Some of my clients blast showtunes and sing while they do dishes. You are not one to sit and meditate, so I would never recommend that for you, but I would definitely recommend that you inject some fun into the things you do, and if you have a family, I would strongly recommend that you include them in the process and decision making of what would be fun because I’m guessing if you have children, they need challenge, choices and control, just like you, so by giving them a bit of that, you can build family bonds as well.
The other thing about including your family is that you’re not always the best at making family time because you think you have to be busy doing something all the time, and for many of you, that makes you happy, so here are a few ways to do double duty that can work not only for you, but for other personality types for different reasons.
If your children have homework, you could sit down with your laptop and work on something at the table while your children do their homework. You can cook dinner while you help them with homework if that’s something you do rather than your partner, and I’m not saying any of this is your job. What I am saying is that you can stack your todo list which can free up time, and you love getting more done in less time, every time, so get creative and have fun with being productive in every way so everyone enjoys the process, not just you.
For the I personality, you are one of the most productivity challenged, because if you don’t like it or think it may take too long, you don’t even want to start. I know this because I am you. I don’t want to do anything boring or tedious either, so how does toxic productivity show up for us? In one of two ways, either we avoid it like the plague until we have to do it and berate ourselves for procrastinating, or we only give it a half hearted effort that takes us way longer than it needs to, and it frustrates us at minimum and enrages us at worst. In either case, the task doesn’t get proper attention, and we end up feeling like a failure once again. Who wants that? Not me, and I’m guessing not you either.
So your best bet to keep the productivity healthy and effective is to make it fun. Now I know that the other personality types might roll their eyes and say that everything doesn’t have to be fun, but for the I personality, it kind of does.
Here’s where the task and people oriented folks diverge, and it’s an important thing to understand. Task oriented people can focus on the task and find satisfaction with just that. For those with a people orientation, relationships are more important, so an I personality can do hard tasks for the people they care about or with the people they care about, but if they have to go it alone, they need to gamify it at least a little bit to keep their interest and insure they’ll get it done.
For them, that could mean that they listen to fun music while they work or body double in a coworking session or both. They may set up intermittent rewards for themselves because they work much better with the carrot than the stick, and that could be anything from a fun treat to a quick phone call with a friend (yes, I and S personalities still make phone calls), or a new outfit if it’s something that took them a lot of effort. They may use timers to see how much they can accomplish in the time allotted or, like me, set those timers to make sure that I stop and get to my conference on time because I am writing this in a hotel room with no distractions, a huge bonus for me for focus, but a huge risk without a timer because I can easily lose track of time.
It helps that I’m still on eastern time and the conference is on pacific time. That way, I have a morning window to get things accomplished, my highest productivity time and then go enjoy hanging out with some awesome people for the rest of the day. By the time we have our masquerade ball at 6pm local time, though, I may be in an exhausted puddle or opt out entirely because as much as I love people, even I have my limits. Lol . I’ll let you know.
Follow up is that I went to the masquerade ball and ducked out early because my feet were hurting, and I was exhausted, but I had fun and talked to some amazing people, so it was definitely worth going. See how that works?
Moving on to the S personality, you love being productive, but your toxic productivity or lack thereof comes from your struggle to set boundaries and enforce them. Having a fair amount of S in my personality mix, while others may not understand, I most definitely do understand that setting boundaries and enforcing them are two different activities for the S personality and neither of them comes easy.
Sometimes it seems simple because you have a task that needs doing, but every time you sit down to do it, someone interrupts you. You lose your train of thought, and it takes you extra time to get back in the flow. Then after several attempts the Supportive personality will just give up, especially if they’re doing something for themselves and not someone else.
On a good day, you reschedule and try again later. On a bad day, that leads to resentment and passive aggressiveness and leaves the S personality’s loved ones feeling hurt and angry and wondering what they did to deserve the unkind comments.
Are they the people who interrupted? Yes. Do they deserve the blame for constantly interrupting when they ‘should’ know not to interrupt? Possible, but in most cases, if this is happening regularly, you as the Supportive personality have only hinted at what you want rather than stating it outright because it feels harsh to say what you want, which is to be left alone for a while to get done what you want to do, and that’s a difficult boundary for you.
There are several ways to deal with this, and I definitely get a lot of pushback from S personalities on them because it’s extremely difficult for them at first. For those with different personalities, please know that if your normally accommodating S person is asking for something directly, it took a lot of courage for them to do so. If you are an S personality, be brave and ask for what you want, several times if you need to and put things into place to remind your loved ones of the boundary you just set. It isn’t being mean to reinforce that boundary. It is actually a kindness to yourself and others because if your people are trained to respect you and your boundaries, they’ll be more likely to respect the boundaries of others too, so this is a service to them as well as yourself.
A couple of conferences I attended gave us door hangers to put on our office that said things like Blogging in Process, please do not disturb unless you have coffee. I don’t drink coffee, so I changed mine to tea. I also have one that says ‘Shhhh! I'm in the process of learning’, and just seeing one of those on the door signaled my family that while they could enter, I was working and would prefer if the conversation they wanted to have could wait. It wasn't a guarantee, but it definitely helped, and what’s really cool is that they’re so easy to make for yourself with some cardboard and Canva, or you can get one from Amazon.
I’ve included a link to a dry erase version in the show notes so you can write whatever you want, and it even lights up so it makes a bigger impact. If you're the creative type, you might even have fun with whatever catchy phrase you want to use for the day to make your heart happy.
One of the other things I talk to Supportive people about is leaving the house or getting help in the house when they want to work, and I know that’s difficult for them because if they’ve committed to being a mom, they can experience a lot of guilt with these two options, so we reframe that guilt.
First, I remind them that because most of them don’t spend money on themselves or take time for themselves other than an occasional haircut if they don't’ do it themselves, and yes, that is definitely a thing for an S personality mom, so using some of their time to work on their business will make them mentally and emotionally more available for their family when they’re finished.
You see, the S personality goes through a lot of mental gymnastics to make sure that everyone is taken care of, but if they don’t allow themselves some time to walk away from that and recharge, they dull their ax, and become this resentful person who wants to help everyone but gets stuck in feeling like no one cares about their needs at all. This short trip away from the house can turn that around in a shorter time than you think.
If that holds no appeal, I suggest a mother’s helper in the house to lighten the load and give them some space to get done what they want to get done without the stress of being solely responsible for the family while they’re trying to work.
Most of the time, the kiddos love having a mother’s helper, and if you hire a younger person, it’s like they have a new playmate. A mother’s helper is usually much more cost effective than daycare, and you’re still there if they need you. Isn't that great?
And while I know that several supportive moms feel like that’s a failing in some way, I assure you it isn’t. Not long ago, even middle class mothers who didn’t have businesses hired teens to help with the children so she could run errands, go shopping, etc. or they hired housekeepers to do the work so they could spend more time doing what they wanted to do, like sew and read, so it’s not like we’re breaking new ground here. We’re actually revisiting a tried and true way of getting help with our families.
The truth is that the supportive women I know that are online entrepreneurs or even those who have jobs outside the house often struggle the most with guilt, but when they can create these small wins for themselves, they give everyone permission to grow and have a better life and isn’t that what we all want if we have families? I certainly think so.
And lastly, let’s talk about the Cautious personality because whether you believe it or not, you might be the personality that most easily falls into the toxic productivity trap. Why? Because you always think you can do better, and you don’t want to let go of anything until it is perfect, so let’s figure out what’s enough and what is too much and toxic for you.
For example, if you’re my surgeon, I definitely want your perfectionistic tendencies to shine through and for you to be totally focused until you finish the job and finish it perfectly because my life depends on it, but if you’re trying to run a business out of your home and raise a family, you might not need to clean, vacuum and spend hours on the house every single day, and then lose sleep so you can do your work and take care of your family too.
One of the great lessons here, and one that I discuss with my husband regularly is what are things truly costing? He definitely struggles with paying for things he knows he could do himself and could probably do better than the people we’re paying. That’s not to criticize him or the people that we hire. It’s merely because my husband is methodical and particular and his work is impeccable, but his time is valuable and sometimes scarce for jobs around the house, especially when he’s traveling for work, so we hire out some things, and it makes life so much easier.
We’ve hired companies to weed and mulch our front garden, to fix our fence and to replace our garage windows, all of which my husband could do, but by paying someone else to do it, we free his time to make more money and have a life because if he tried to do everything, we would both we working all the time, and some of that stuff is just not fun for us, nor does it make sense to do it ourselves when we can make more per hour than the people that we hire will charge. Essentially, it’s a win-win situation, because we get the thing done that we want done, and those people get to make money so everyone wins. Yay!
When a C personality can do that, it’s a double win because not only are they free to do more of what they want, they’re letting go of perfectionism that can be as destructive as it is motivating, and here’s the best part, even if you feel the need to neaten up or put finishing touches on something you’ve hired someone to do, they’ve still done the bulk of the work, and you’re bringing it up to your high standards with much less effort, and that is a beautiful thing.
So there you have it. Each brand of productivity toxicity and how to work through it. I hope something in this podcast will help you or someone you love live a happier, healthier life, and if you’d like to dive further into this idea, check out the Productivity by Personality mini course that you can get today for only $27. Prices may be going up soon, so check it out and see what it can do for you.
That way, you can enjoy your life and your business more than you ever have, so if you want the inside scoop and access to all of the resources to come, make sure to join the Moving Toward Better email list and get that and more.
If you have a specific productivity question, book a free, 15 minute DISCovery call and we can get you on the track to better immediately.You can do that and sign up for the email community on the Moving Toward Better homepage.
As always, if you like what you’ve heard, please share and subscribe.
Until next time, keep moving toward better, whatever that looks like for you.
Love you all!
Show Notes
While I love to talk about productivity hacks and how to be more productive in your life and business, there comes a time when that can tip over into a toxic situation, and this episode discusses how to avoid that for all personality types.
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Dolly and Pitbull Collab - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/04/harvard-psychology-expert-signs-youre-dealing-with-toxic-productivity.html#:~:text=What%20is%20toxic%20productivity%3F,expense%20of%20your%20well%2Dbeing.
Lighted Dry Erase Door Hanger - https://amzn.to/3xGju6f
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