Why Do I Feel The Need to Be Productive?

During these times of trying to manage the pandemic many of us are trying to manage just the basics of day to day living.  Some of us are having a hard time managing our energy and getting stuff done.  Others are feeling the need to be productive and have the desire to get stuff done.  Recently many people are starting to question why they feel the need to be so productive.  Some folks have been thinking about this pre-covid-19 and others started feeling the urges after things started to shut down.  Some individuals started yearning for more busy and task filled days.  Where does this need to be productive come from?  There are 4 types of thought on why we desire to be productive: Expectation, Anxiety, Regulation, and Stimulation.  

Many therapists, and people in general, are pushing for people to move away from the need to be productive and lean into their need to rest. I agree with them. However, I believe we need to understand our urge to be productive and what it is trying to serve. By looking at these categories it maybe helpful to understand your need to be productive and find ways to add in rest and balance in your life.

Expectation

Some people have questioned if the need to be productive comes from a capitalistic system that incentives us to be busy and to produce.  We might often feel the pressure of society to be busy.  Particularly in the age of social media, we see other’s baking bread, doing a work-out routine, or living their “best life” and we feel the expectation on ourselves to do the same.  

Another point of expectation is that we might be used to getting a certain amount done in a completely different context.  Going through the pandemic and not having the same amount of resources but our expectations have not changed. This skews our expectations of what we expect to be able to get done.  Our expectations set a standard for what is “normal” that we feel we have to adjust to.

We need to be aware of how we build expectations for ourselves.  School and work might set what expectations look like in those environments.  But we have to pay attention to what is important to us.  If we let others set the expectations for us (i.e., work, facebook, friends) then we don’t figure out what seems reasonable for ourselves.

Expectations don’t have to be a bad thing.  At work we have expectations to meet so that the team as a whole can succeed.  I ask you to get this work project done by this date so I know things are ready for what I need to do.  The problems with expectations and social media is that we set our own expectations against what others want, either for themselves or what they want from us.  We often forget to set expectations we want for ourselves.

What to do: Create goals

This might seem counter-intuitive to combating expectations, but we have to set our own expectations so they don’t get crowded out with everyone else’s expectations.  When the pandemic started some people were putting out that they should write their novel, start working out, and do something amazing with their free time.  This might be other people’s expectations, not ours  We might have goals of just feeling safe, maybe think about a career change, figure out work outs during a pandemic, or try new meals.  The goal might also be to find ways to be okay resting or finding activities that help you rest

We have to figure out what is important to us in the context that we are in.  If I want to eat better then how do I create that goal?  What is eating better?  How do I plan my meals so I can eat better?  How do I make it easy on myself to eat better?  Thinking about these goals helps us reflect what is our version of success and not what other people’s version of success. 

I usually talk about 5 batteries often to figure out what is lacking for ourselves at this moment.  I often ask clients which of their batteries feel empty and needs recharging.  Consider what aspects of your life need care and attention.  What are SMALL ways to move forward with some of those goals.  Always start small.  Doing too much will just burn you out and most people have better luck with slow and steady changes.  

Remember you are trying to set your goals, but understand what expectations you do want to place on yourself.  We all need good challenges to keep growing and connecting with others.  Maybe you want to work on being a better friend, a better cook, or something that will help reach your goals.  But we need to have clear definitions of what those are.  Again think about what how you might set rest as a goal. What would that look like?

Anxiety 

It is hard to be restful is we are anxious. Often we can feel restless, frigidity, and feel our minds racing with thoughts. It is hard to rest in this state. Sometimes being productive is about doing something with this nervous energy.

When we get distress we sometimes need distractions. The world can feel overwhelming right now with everything going on.  So having something to focus on can help us not feel so trapped.  Finding something to do, even the small things, saves us from feeling helpless.  There is an old experiment of the Learned Helplessness Dog.  This poor dog was put in a cage that kept giving him shocks.  No matter what the dog did they were always shocked and couldn’t escape.  Even when the door was finally open the dog would just sit in the cage and continued to get shocked.  This is what we are intuitively trying to avoid.  We don’t want to feel helpless.  We want to do something. Anything.

I’ve been encouraging people to focus on things more locally.  This might be your own house, local politics, how your local area is handling Covid-19.  If you try to focus on the larger national or global picture then you feel powerless and helpless.  

So it may seem weird but learning how to make bread can help you feel more powerful and less helpless.  When we feel anxious about something we need to be able to do something.  The problem with some of these strategies is that we tend to blow off things that feel too overwhelming.  If the thought of “What if work lays me off?” pops into your heard you might then go “hey I can sweep the floor!”  You’ve gone from feeling anxious and helpless to feeling better that you cleaned your space.  But you haven’t figured out what you need to do in case you are laid off.  Maybe you could check in with your boss and see the financial state, or update your resume, talk to a friend, and think about strategies to make yourself safe.  But instead of doing those we just clean more or find our own version of distraction.  

We need to make time to focus on some of these anxious and overwhelming thoughts.  We want to avoid feeling helpless, but we also need to thing about ways to address the problems we are feeling helpless about.  A note about the Learned Helplessness Dog, research staff had to move the dog out of the cage a few times for the dog to realize it could move out the now open door on their own.  Sometimes it is helpful to seek out support when things are overwhelming such as therapy, financial counselors, friends, or people who have more expertise in an area you are feeling overwhelmed in.  

What to do: Set Aside Time to Reflect

I have a concept of the Alone Time battery where we have time to think about what is going one for us.  We all need time to be able to understand what stress is holding on in our bodies and minds.  We also have to think about what anxieties of the world are in a place that doesn’t seem overwhelming.  I’ve been encouraging people to schedule time to think about a topic.  This should include a time limit and a distracting activity AFTER that time limit is up.  

How do we not make it overwhelming?  We have to do it while still feeling safe even if it is uncomfortable.  So maybe you can talk to a friend about some of the things that are on your mind.  Maybe you ask your therapist to set aside some time in session to talk about it.  Maybe you don’t know what to do and need to do more research so the goal would be to do more research.  Setting small goals of either understanding where you are and what your concerns are can help you process those anxieties without feeling overwhelmed and helpless. 

Also focus small and local.  I see many people overwhelmed by politics.  They don’t know what to do, but they might be able to talk to local politicians and organizations in small ways that they can help.  The goal here is to find small ways to focus on what you can do and move out of feeling helpless.  You might not fix the problem, but you may feel less stuck in it.  

We need time to understand what we are anxious about so we can find ways to address it, find support, and less of finding ways to ignore it. If we do not, then it becomes a barrier for us to actually rest. There is an old saying that when you move, your problems move with you. If we keep distracting from our anxieties, we may never feel restful because they are just moving with us. Make time to think about them, so you mind can relax a little.

Regulation

This lack of “being productive” seems to have an impact on people’s mental health in other ways.  We aren’t able to regulate ourselves so we become more anxious, more depressed, and less able to feel restful in our day and in our sleep.  I believe that our “need to be more productive” is more about bringing back a way to feel regulated and safe in our lives.  What do I mean by that?

Daniel Siegle, writer, psychiatrist, and founder of the Interpersonal Neurobiology perspectives, talks about a window.  In this window we need a certain amount of flexibility and a certain amount of structure.  If we have too much structure then it feels rigid, and if we have too much flexibility it feels like chaos.  Our days are too flexible in what we are used to and thus feel like chaos. What if this need to be productive is the need to make something that feels like chaos feel more structured?  

When the pandemic first hit, many of our day to day structures were gone.  Some of the ways that we coped and took care of ourselves were lost because we have to quarantine, social distance, or shut certain activities/places down.  Because of this, the way that we brought in order to our chaotic world was lost.  We knew how to organize ourselves, how much energy to expend on our days, and everything we needed to get done through that structure.  

Our previously busy days meant that we knew where to fit all the tasks that we hold in a nice structure.  Let’s say Lisa used to get up in the morning and made breakfast before rushing out the door for work.  Then Lisa had meetings and a set aside time for lunch and maybe a quick errand before heading back to work.  She knew when she had free time to get that errand done because after work she was meeting up with friends before going home and making dinner.  Now Lisa is at home and sometimes forgets to eat.  She doesn’t rush out of bed anymore because she might not have a Zoom call until 11.  She has to get that errand done, but there is no pressure on time and she keeps forgetting to do it.  Lisa keeps meaning to reach out to friends but keeps putting it off.  She has lost the anchor of a series of events that she could place her tasks in.  Instead of I will do that task after I finish that activity, it is just I need to get that task done.  

But we need structure for multiple aspects of our lives.  When do we eat?  When do we move and/or exercise?  How do we set up sleep rituals?  When do we get time to socialize?  When do I get my errands done?  When do I get work done?  When do I plan time to think about how to get all these things done?  By losing our anchors we lose the structure in how we did all these things and then procrastinate and then rush to get them done at the last minute...if they get done that is. But we need to start thinking about how to structure our days in a reasonable way.  

The window can also go to the other extreme.  If we make our schedules too rigid or strict then they can feel confining.  When the pandemic started we didn’t have the bandwidth to consider everything because everything was all new.  A way this sometimes happens is that people put off setting up structure because of the fear that they might fail and forget to do the task.  We need the flexibility to fail and learn from our mistakes as we build this structure.  If we wait until we know that we are 100% going to do the task then it won’t get done.  

What to do: Create a Schedule

So you have written out you goals and know that you have to set aside time for anxieties.  When do you do that?  Creating a schedule helps build in structure so you can know when you are going to do those activities.  Just knowing that on Sunday morning at 11:00 you are going to talk to a friend (via virtual coffee) about that issue going on in your head can help you feel less stressed about that anxiety you were feeling.  This also helps us create more of those anchors that are no missing in our lives.  

Our aspect of time is way off right now so building a schedule may help us feel anchored back into time.  Your schedule should include some aspect of flexibility and some aspects of structure.  For example you might have the goal to work out.  You might need the anchor/structure of having a dedicated time for a work out, but leave flexibility to what the work out is.  Maybe you will run if it is nice out, or do isometrics if it is raining, or a zumba class if you need to energize yourself or yoga if you need to decompress.  If you need more flexibility, then maybe you have a list of tasks that you chose in which order to organize them through the day.  If it doesn’t get done then you might need more structure.  Update what doesn’t work and keep what works for you.

If we make sure we find time to do all the things we need for ourselves then it feels like less chaos.  IMPORTANT: You schedule should include your self-care and rest activities.  You might assume they will just happen spontaneously or you know you’ll just do them, but that's not how our brains work.  It is also easier to do the hard things if we know we have something to look forward to.  (Which we all need something to look forward to right now.)   This has also helped some people feel like these activities are less guilty pleasures and more things that they have accomplished.

Stimulation

Another explanation for our desire to be productive is that we might be looking for a dopamine hit.  Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is released when we feel pleasure or accomplishment.  If we are feeling low then we might want to do tasks that release dopamine.  Making bread or other novel experiences equals more dopamine.  Human connection equals more dopamine.  Lessening my anxiety when I get that task I’ve been dreading completed equals more dopamine.  You get the picture.  

The dopamine explanation is another way in how we try to regulate ourselves.  If I’m feeling under-stimulated I’ll go do a novel task.  If I’m hungry I’ll find something to eat.  If I’m feeling lonely I’ll go meet up with friends.  If I’m feeling anxious I should do something to make me feel more safe.  If I’m stressed I should do something that will help me relax.  When we accomplish these goals we get a dopamine release.

Problems might come in when we are looking for dopamine hits and not having easy access to them.  Then we go to things that do give dopamine hits but not ones that are actually helping us.  We might scroll on social media mindlessly.  We might keep playing video games even though they aren’t stimulating anymore.  We might eat that entire container of Oreos.  I often call these junk food self-care (sometimes it is literal junk food) in that they are okay as sometimes things, but not an activity that is giving us a strong sustaining dopamine hit.  We need nutritious versions of dopamine hits.  

Figuring out what is a good dopamine hit for you can help you figure out what you need to do for yourself when you need stimulation.  Instead of going for healthy options which might need some (meal) prep, we go to the easy access junk food version.  (Again sometimes this is literal.)  But if we know what are good versions of this then prep and make it easier on ourselves to go the healthy versions of self-care.

What to do: Create a menu

Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD created a thing she calls a Dopamenu. This is a menu of activities that help stimulate you and putting all the various options you like on display.  You might list Appetizers which are activities that are easy and light and help get your  started on bigger tasks, Entrees which have nutritiously sustaining activities, and Desserts, because those junk food versions are still good on occasion.  

You don’t have to create a menu, but create a list that has categories.  Maybe you have different levels.  I had one client going through pregnancy and getting used to her new body levels of energy and figure out what tasks were low, medium or high energy tasks.  That way when she was looking for something to do she could check in with her body and then decide which task to do.  Be creative in how you do this and make sure the list is accessible.  

I also encourage clients to put restful activities on their menus.  Doing self-care while looking for stimulation can still be very helpful.  Reading, watching TV, gardening, chatting with friends, petting the cat/dog, knitting are all low energy restful things that we need from time to time.  

Final thoughts: What we are looking for when we are trying to be productive has less about “producing” anything and more about our own individual needs.  These needs include rest and making time for that.  We need to make time for all things in our lives but if you are feeling the urge to be productive ask yourself if this is about Expectations, Anxiety, Regulation, or Stimulation and figure out what to do with that.