When Does Productivity Become Unhealthy?
Let’s get started with this series.
I think this unhealthy behavior truly began at the very moment I started trying to discover the perfect productivity system for me. I was copying the templates from of my favorite productivity like Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank, Matt D’Avella, Better Ideas, and pretty much anyone else you could think of in the space. The problem is when I find something new and exciting I just jump headfirst into the deep end, my ears fill up with water, and I ignore every single caution sign surrounding the pool.
Just like any other skill, no one has ever woken up and accomplished everything they’ve ever wanted in a 12 hour period. Well, I’m sure someone has but that’s definitely not me. That didn’t stop me at all, I was determined to build my own system and oh did fall into the rabbit hole. It started with getting a to do list app and packing absolutely everything I could think of into what was supposed to be a 10 hour work day. Then I moved on to creating a dozen databases in Notion, which was suppose to be a helpful tool for remembering but ended up becoming a nightmare of over-organization.
The root of how my obsession with productivity became unhealthy can be broken into two points. The first was failing to look at anything from a macro perspective and only focusing on the little details that made up every project; I never considered if those little details actually contributed anything to the final product or if it was just busy work. The second issue was failing to understand that I was rushing the process, which lead to sacrificing most of the things I enjoyed in my personal life. What was suppose to be 10 hour work days Monday-Friday ended up being 18–20 hours of non stop work 7 days per week. I reached a point where I was completely burnt out, and I knew there must be something my system was missing.
We’ll continue this tomorrow.
