National Mental Health Week Edition- Guilt and Productivity

It’s a Friday night. You’ve just submitted your final assignment for the week, and you’re about to start getting ready for your weekend outing with friends. But, this newfound feeling of freedom is soon dominated by a looming cloud of stressful deadlines and the mountain of work that you know will quickly and inevitably pile up in the very near future. Your friends are slipping into their evening dresses while you’re slipping into a state of disarray. Your mind races with ways you could get ahead and things you can do just to stay afloat, just to survive one more week in the ever-demanding whirlwind of student life. 

This constant desire for productivity is a feeling that many people, especially university students, are all too familiar with: any fun moment, exciting event, or enticing outing is quickly overshadowed by insurmountable stress. What within us says, “No! You can’t possibly have a night off when ‘x’, ‘y’, and ‘z’ are ahead!”? There always seems to be something more to do, even if you’re sure you’ve done it all. Why do we feel so much guilt any time we take some time off?

This unshakeable fear of underperforming is often referred to as productivity guilt: a strong feeling of remorse about taking leisure time instead of exceeding expectations of hyper-productivity. This usually entails self-exaggeration of your workload to avoid downtime and striving for perfectionism. As previously mentioned, this is especially common for students in a college setting, who often feel as if their only purpose in life is to excel academically. And who could blame you for feeling this way? With countless hours spent studying and future planning constantly on your mind, the pressures of university life never disappear. 

Often, we find multiple distinct yet intertwining explanations for productivity guilt. Some contributing factors could have to do with individual differences. For example, someone who identifies as a hard worker, always the best at their job or at the top of their class, may be more likely to suffer from this phenomenon because they don’t recognize themselves if they are not working tirelessly. This facet of personality is especially common among college students. Think about this: the average college student is expected to spend roughly 11-13 hours a week studying, coupled with likely 12-16 hours a week actually spent in the classroom. If college students are devoting so much to school with so little time to themselves, how do they recognize who they are without the constant demands of the academic world? 

But beyond the realm of schooling, this mindset of the never-ending grind is even culturally ingrained in guiding concepts of success in our future plans. As the United States teeters on a recession, the cost of living continues to surmount. This year alone, the price of food has risen by an average of 9.4%, the highest it has spiked since April of 1981 (World Economic Forum, 2022).  Given these growing economic pressures, it’s only natural that students aim for higher-paying jobs straight out of college. In a country where costs and expectations only seem to rise, it must follow that personal pressures rise as well. In a place where everyone around you expects your maximum effort, and everyone else seems to always be providing this, it can be impossible to separate yourself from the never-ending pressure of your surroundings, whether they be academic, personal, cultural, or otherwise.

Essentially, the productivity guilt that is so common around us, especially at the university level of academics, could emerge for a variety of reasons and appear in a variety of different ways. But, no matter what causes it or how it presents itself, the importance of recognizing and combating this problem cannot be overstated. We need to acknowledge that it’s completely acceptable to take it easy on ourselves; breaks from work are healthy, and even required, to achieve the high level of personal pursuit that so many of us adhere to. At the end of the day, we must remember that before we are a student, a homeowner, or any other social role, we are people, and we shouldn’t expect too much from ourselves. The value of enjoyment in our lives supersedes everything else, and that is something that can never be remedied by any amount of productivity.