Above all else, self-care comes first.
Like many of those who chase after success, I am one of those people who constantly obsess about productivity hacks and how to spend less time and get more done.
Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels
Neglecting self-care has sabotaged my productivity
However, I’ve gradually found out an ugly truth: it’s my tendency to neglect self-care which is the one constant thing that sabotages my productivity.
Here are a few bad habits that I notice I am a victim to. Some of them are going to sound quite distasteful (disgusting, even). Proceed with caution! You’ve been warned.
Put off peeing or even pooping just because I have to finish a task at hand;
Refuse to go out for a meal, a walk or even simply to stand up and do a little bit of stretching because I foolishly believe that sitting through the day can somehow miraculously help me finish a task at hand. (But the truth is, you’ll find your creative juice drying up when your body slowly gives way to starvation for the lack of nourishment, no matter how determined you’re to finish a piece of work.)
Binge-listen to podcasts when I’m peeing, pooping and brushing my teeth, even when I know on a rational level that some silence could do me good, and even when I know that concentrating on these tasks could rob me of valuable knowledge about the current state that my body is in. I’ve come to view looking at, examining my body and caring for it to be a luxury that I can’t afford the time for.
Keep working and staring at my computer / mobile phone screen before going to sleep, and as a result, the quality of my sleep suffers, and I find myself feeling groggy and grumpy after waking up every day.
How my relationship with workaholism changed.
Workaholicism has become endemic to my life. I thought she was a friend, a useful friend, and so I welcomed her with open arms; but now I’ve found out that when left unchecked, she’s become an insidious enemy, one that’s hard to be rid of. It may sound easy to beat to you, but I’ve found that it could creep in without my noticing. And the tricky thing is, once you’ve caught the workaholic ‘virus’, you might not really when to stop being one because people have come to expect so much good work from you.
Insidious signs that workaholism is creeping in
I’ve found that workaholicism creeps in at the moments when you make tiny decisions in your head like these:
Refusing to stop working on a task and take a break to meet the impossible standards I’ve set for myself;
Trying to finish a task that’s impossible to finish before my supposed mealtime;
Putting off rest days and cancelling holidays to meet the deadlines I’ve set for myself.
Demanding myself to show up on every social media platform to promote my personal brand to every potential customer.
Needless to say, the fact that showing up everywhere is constantly championed as the number one secret sauce to achieving success in your business is not helping. For aspiring influencers, there there is virtually no limit as to how much you can be showing up in the online space to promote yourself.
Social media marketing megastars like Gary Vee are telling us to put out more than 100 pieces of content online every day and show up everywhere, at first on Facebook, and then on Youtube, and then on Instagram, and now on Medium and LinkedIn as well. Not to mention the fact that there’re multiple features on a single platform that you have to juggle. Instagram is not just the Instagram feed; it’s also the stories and the DM’s; Youtube is not just the videos, but the community posts and the stories as well; Facebook is not just your Facebook page but also the Facebook group (in which you need to start discussions as well as be the moderator when you have a small team.) and Facebook stories. Other coaches such as Sean Cannell say that quality matters more than quantity, but it doesn’t take a genius to tell you that quality could take even longer to produce than quantity.
Social media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk has famously said that ‘“If you are not producing 100 pieces of content … every single day you are leaving the greatest opportunity in the world on the table.”
Youtube guru Sean Cannell said in his podcast that quality has come to matter more than quantity now when it comes to posting on social media.
My obsession with productivity has ended up being my downfall. Even though I haven’t yet suffered from a panic attack or any sort of debilitating health problems (that will definitely deal a blow to my productivity when they eventually arise) because of it, I’ve noticed that it’s resulted in a decline in my mental stability and a spike in my irritability. I’ve made significantly more mistakes at work. And I’ve become scatterbrained and forgetful.
I used to google the answers to the question: ‘How to become more motivated at work?’, but now I’ve come to be aware of this — it’s not the motivation that I lack, but the discipline to schedule breaks in between tasks, the judgment to prioritise the truly important tasks and the wiseness to understand that there is no cheating time. Getting work done doesn’t only take hard work, but patience and the discipline to stop working when you SHOULD.
Rein in your passion; let your prudence speak (a bit) louder
My passion tells me to head straight on, but my prudence knows better. I now understand that I need to rein in my passion and let my prudence speak louder. Because it knows that above everything else, I have to take care of myself. Cause everything else will fall apart if I neglect to take care of myself.
