The Myth of Productivity.

Lately, I’ve been working for about eight and a half hours a day. I read, I write, I study. It’s a rhythm that feels both sacred and slightly dangerous. My ex told me I was going hypomanic, and I can’t say I blamed them for thinking so. But I don’t think I am. I feel grounded. I feel present. It’s not the wild, reckless mania of past times. It’s more like I’ve tethered myself to a goal - KLEE 2026 - and for once, I’m not floating away.

Still, I can’t help but think about how we’ve come to measure our worth by our output. Somewhere along the way, “being productive” stopped meaning “creating meaningfully” and became “working endlessly.” I sometimes ask myself, Who benefits from my exhaustion?

We live in a world where overworking isn’t just normalized - it’s glamorized. You scroll through Instagram and there it is: the influencer with their 5 a.m. routine, the perfect breakfast, the “rise and grind” caption. It’s a performance, and yet it seeps into how we live. Capitalism has turned productivity into a moral virtue. The less we rest, the more “worthy” we feel. Rest, on the other hand, becomes guilt-ridden.

I think back to the early industrial era - the time when the idea of “productive labor” became tied to human value. Karl Marx wrote about alienation, how workers lose themselves in the process of production. We’ve just digitalized that alienation now. It’s in our laptops, our emails, our 10-hour days of constant engagement. And even though I love what I do - writing, reading, studying - I sometimes wonder if this love is also a trap. Because when you love the work, it becomes easier for the system to consume you.

There’s a very subtle violence in hustle culture. It tells you that if you aren’t doing enough, you are not enough. You could be healing from trauma, taking care of your body, or simply breathing - and still, there’s this whisper in your head saying, “you’re falling behind.” Behind what? Behind whom? The world doesn’t stop when you take a break, but the fear that it might is what keeps us moving.

For people like me - people who have survived on survival - it gets more complicated. Productivity becomes a coping mechanism. I don’t just work to achieve; I work to stay alive. When I write, I’m not chasing success. I’m chasing meaning. When I study, it’s not ambition - it’s structure. I work when I am sad, when I am guilty, when I am lost. It’s the one way I can trick my mind into silence.

And yet, I see how capitalism preys on that very instinct. It sells us the illusion that if we work enough, we will heal, we will be worthy, we will belong. But it’s a lie dressed up in motivational language. Hustle culture is just neoliberalism with a self-help book. It tells you that your failure to rest is your strength, when in fact it’s the system’s biggest success.

I sometimes wonder if we even remember what rest looks like. Real rest - not doom-scrolling, not watching something to distract ourselves, not half-sleeping while planning the next day. Rest as in doing nothing. But “nothing” terrifies us now because it doesn’t fit into the narrative of progress. The irony is that even self-care has become work. You have to buy the candles, the journals, and the skin care sets. Rest has been packaged and priced.

There’s also a class angle to this. Who gets to romanticize burnout? Who can afford to rest? Productivity culture hits differently when you come from a place where survival is not optional. For many, the choice isn’t between “rest” and “work.” It’s between “eat” and “don’t.” The very idea of “balance” feels elitist when some of us are just trying to hold our lives together.

But here’s the paradox: I don’t want to stop working. I love the feeling of being absorbed in something. I love the rush of finishing a piece of writing and seeing it published. I love reading a case and understanding it fully. Maybe the problem isn’t work itself, but the world that insists on making it our only measure of worth.

I think of Virginia Woolf and her line about killing “the angel in the house.” Maybe we need to kill “the worker in the system.” The one who can’t rest. The one who feels guilty for existing without producing. Because rest, too, is a form of resistance.

I am trying to unlearn this - slowly, hesitantly. When I work now, I try to ask myself why. Why am I doing this? Is it for myself, or for the illusion of control? I’ve realized that true productivity has nothing to do with constant motion. It’s about alignment. About doing things that don’t drain your spirit.

I want to reclaim productivity as something humane. Not a race, not a metric. Something closer to creation. A balance between effort and ease. Between doing and being. Because if the system wants us to keep burning, maybe the most radical thing we can do is to stay gentle.

I’m still working every day, still writing, still studying. But I also try to pause. I remind myself that I am not a machine. That I don’t have to earn my right to rest. That I am, somehow, enough - even when I am still. But to be honest, at the end of the day, I resist this realization too; I just wanna keep working as if I have no choice.

References / Further Reading

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