For the 20-something-year-old college student trying to balance studying, work, extracurriculars and much more all day, every day. It’s college, the best possible place for networking, intellectual pursuits and social endeavors that you will ever see in your life, so you ought to make the most out of it, right?
Your stress is often amplified the second you open your social media apps to see:
“Don’t be lazy.”
“Hard work will pay off.”
“You’re wasting time you could be using to make money.”
The millions of reminders of your ineptitude and unproductivity plague you as you take your first moment of rest after a day of long, hard work for classes and clubs. Creators are shaming their audiences under the guise of “motivation” and “sharing their productivity” to influence their audience. But in reality, it seems it is just another way to show viewers that they are “better,” and to make their audience feel bad for not doing the same. With that, the “productivity demon” is born.
Many influencers can’t help but display their simultaneous ego and insecurity – they believe they have something to prove to people. By oversaturating this concept of “productivity,” they transform the idea of normal, producing a highly unrealistic “day in my life” where we see them doing a million tasks in a day and going to a thousand different places. Who really has THAT much to do in a day? And why do they feel the need to constantly be talking about it?
The “productivity demon” is exactly that, an intangible demon plaguing all our social media, telling us that any time of rest or passivity is a time we are idly wasting. This wave of creators rapidly encouraging “hustle culture” coincides with the rise of the phrase “rot” as a means to describe any sort of unproductive, “homebody” behavior.
The inconceivability of this lifestyle is what draws us in; we, as an audience, find this to be unimaginable and even unachievable. But it’s often that a social audience treats the unachievable as a challenge or a goal to meet. Influencers encourage this in a multitude of other ways across forums, creating this lifestyle ideal that they know will influence their audience and followers who already strive to be like them.
It is also important to note that the productive days these influencers film allow them to produce a lot of content in a single day. Just like the rest, these influencers have largely busy days full of errands and appointments, but just like us, it likely isn’t their everyday reality. People on social media CAN lie, and they DO lie. It is very likely that a week’s worth of “day in my life” videos are all variations of the same day done in different shirts and jewelry. At the end of the day, these influencers are getting paid for this. If they see that this idea of being overproductive is trending, they are going to feed into the trend. That is how they get views – it’s their job.
So, how much is too much?
This is a question completely dependent on an individual’s lifestyle, environment, and many other factors. In a general sense, there are some signs to look out for to determine when you are “doing too much.”
Not having any time for your friends and family in a week
You should still be able to fit in a ten-minute call with your mom after class, or catch up with a friend during lunch, even in your busiest weeks. Scheduling your day to fit your activities and tasks to a tee with no leeway or room for some social decompression is not healthy. Being so busy that you need all 24 hours in a day to fit your lifestyle is a sign that you are not living a feasible lifestyle. You should be able to have a social life; productive accomplishments in the other parts of life are useless if you have no one to share them with.
Not taking good care of your body
The real key to making the most of the hours you do have in a day is to fuel your body with the things it needs the most: FOOD AND SLEEP. Believe it or not, you are limiting your productivity when you force yourself to get up for that 6:00 A.M. workout class after heading to bed a little after 12:00. The same will occur when you decide to eat a protein bar for lunch instead of taking thirty minutes to go eat at the dining hall and get a full meal.
Refusing to take breaks
Your brain is an organ, just like your heart, liver, kidneys, etc. Productivity without recovery time leads to overuse. By overextending yourself all day, you aren’t giving your brain time to rest and recuperate. If you wouldn’t run eight hours without giving yourself a break, why would you study and complete tasks in that manner, too. It’s perfectly normal to have “on days,” where you do feel super productive and complete a million things you need to do, but that shouldn’t be your everyday. For every “on day,” allow yourself an “off day,” where you get out of bed late, and stay in your jammies until 12:00, or whatever you find soothing.
Let’s get one thing straight: productivity is not bad! In fact, it’s a positive thing for young women to be influenced to work hard in a world where (unfortunately) we often have to prove ourselves.
But as I said, it is all about balance. Recuperating your mind and body and allowing yourself some downtime is not a reward; it is a necessity.