While creating space for rest
Society’s idea of success encourages us to be as productive as humanly possible, which leads many people to embrace toxic productivity habits. Toxic productivity involves overworking yourself, neglecting other aspects of your life, and feeling guilty for resting. Combined with the stress and competition involved in being a college student, the pressure to engage in this behavior can become incredibly overwhelming for students. While being productive is highly rewarding, there is also a fine line between reaching your goals and overworking yourself. This is a habit that I’ve learned to recognize within myself, and take a step back when I need to in order to prioritize a well-rounded life.
The first step in correcting this habit is to recognize when you’re overworking yourself. For me, this usually looks like not sleeping enough, having no time to rest, and if I do have a moment of down-time, feeling guilty when I’m doing anything that’s not considered productive. From here, it’s important to analyze where you can create space in your day for yourself, not for work, school or whatever else is on your to do list. This could mean taking 15-30 minutes out of your day to go for a walk with a friend, read a book or watch one of your favorite shows. Do something that allows you to unwind, while wholeheartedly letting go of any guilt you may feel for doing so. From here, I find that it’s best to consistently implement these breaks into my routine while creating a clear boundary between resting and working. This ensures that the time I spend not actively working is not consumed by thoughts of what I could be doing, and instead allows me to relax and stay in the present moment.
Letting go of guilt can be a challenging aspect of overcoming toxic productivity, and often makes it difficult to truly rest. I think many people share this experience, the guilt of feeling like you’re never doing enough, and therefore you shouldn’t be allowed to rest until you do. This harmful narrative unfortunately shapes many of our lives, but at what point is sacrificing your mental health to complete a few more tasks worth it? No matter how much you achieve in life or how hard you work, it’s unlikely that the guilt of not doing enough will go away, so it is up to you to set that boundary and put yourself first. Because the truth is, you deserve the rest, sleep and time doing things you truly enjoy, regardless of how many productive tasks you’ve done that day or how much there is left to do.
I am certainly not telling you to let go of your goals or not strive to attain certain achievements, but you must not compromise yourself in this process, and instead set boundaries with your free time and productivity. During periods in life when it just feels like there isn’t enough time in the world to get everything done that you need to, it’s easy to fall into unhealthy cycles of productivity, while neglecting other aspects of your life. This doesn’t have to be the case. Recognition of these patterns, accommodating your to-do list, embracing rest and being gentle with yourself are all ways in which you can let go of toxic productivity to ultimately create a healthy balance between work, school and life.