What Constant Anxiety Of “Not Doing Enough” Taught Me

“Again, it should go without saying that it is natural to want to improve. We are biologically programmed to quickly become impatient with the status quo and to push for better things. But we’ve pushed it too far. What’s more, we’ve lost sight of the fact that productivity is a means to an end, not a goal in and of itself.”

This is an excerpt from the book “ Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving” by Celeste Headlee that I read almost a year ago when I was going through a serious burnout at work. Whatever she mentioned made sense as to why, as human beings have a tendency to do more than we should — even though it is always expected to be that everyone will experience exhaustion and burnout at some point if we push even further than our limits.

I am constantly feeling this anxiety about not doing enough.

This is a part of internalized capitalism that is ingrained in me that if I am not working enough and producing enough, then I am worthless. This has been the same old narrative that I keep playing in my head. The Madwoman takes the lead to whip my ass to do more. Later in life, I realized that I was the main culprit in making my own life even harder than it is. Since when I was at school, I slept fewer hours, I took up multiple extracurricular activities than my peers, I worked at multiple part-time jobs, and my schedule book is filled with things to do and events every 30 minutes — and I thought that’s a badge of honor. There’s also a part of me that I have been distracting myself and trying to escape from all the negative feelings and emotions I had at that time — which makes things worse. I felt good about being productive and pretended to feel better because I was able to run away from what I do not what to think or feel at that time — these made it easier for me to go through rounds and rounds of burnout over the years. I did not know that I was going through burnout — all I knew is I felt I was weak, useless, and a failure.

The more I felt the exhaustion, the more I did the work — as I thought, I might get used to it as time goes by.

We all know that is not how things work. Why do you overwork yourself more if your body cannot take it? Why do you want to want to do more if you have exhausted all your resources already? If I was my friend, I will ask her to stop. If I was a member of my family, I will tell her to rest. If I was my colleague, I will let her know that she needs to change something about her work — not because she is incapable, it is just because it is not sustainable anymore. But, no.

The last thing I could do is to allow myself to rest — but I was not able to even do it.

Because I thought that I was weak, I was useless, and I was a failure. I was not strong enough to manage all the workload that I should be managing. I was not useful enough to be able to be productive to help others. I was not being successful at translating all my effort into a fruitful promotion and salary increase. Internalized capitalism has played such a huge role to downplay my sacrifices, it has made me gaslight, and it has made me question my existence. This has made me maximize my productivity to 120–200% as I thought my value will be measured by how much I have done during the working hours and even over time. I have conditioned myself that I do not deserve to have a Happy Friday without feeling extreme tiredness by pushing myself a little bit more — where I am almost close to the edge of the cliff.

Then, I came across again this passage while I was in my period of recovery:

“While it’s true in theory that employers appreciate getting things done quickly, they often do not in practice. Keep in mind the “time is money” principle. It’s incredibly difficult to evaluate a worker based on subjective measures like quality, innovation, or creative problem-solving. But it’s simple and easy to record how many hours a worker spends on the job and whether tasks are completed on time. Quality of work is rarely measurable, but hours of work are.”

The fact that most of the time, even the hours you have put in work are not even counted.

Even though, the productivity guru/ex-Doctor/YouTuber Ali Abdaal has mentioned in his YouTube video “ 28 Life Lessons from 28 Years in 28 Minutes “ said that “consistency and quantity lead to quality”. Even if the overtime hours we have spent for the first few years in the new environment can be considered a learning curve for most of us — it still does not justify the fact that so many of us are unnecessarily working longer hours.

And as for myself, I know that I should let go of whatever anxiety, fear, and worry I have about “feeling like I am not doing enough”. Because I have done a lot already. My body screamed for help but I was still the only one who refused to admit that I needed rest. I have to do something about it. I have to say goodbye to my ego. I have to surrender and follow what my body is demanding from me.

Aside from the ample rest, I needed to confront this anxiety that creates this vicious cycle of doing more than what is required.

Through therapy, I found out that my negative core belief was “I am worthless”. This core belief drove me to do more and try my best to be good in everything so that I could feel that I am worthy. The driving force is somewhat coming from my fear of “not being valued enough”. Definitely, this has to do with a lot with my upbringing but my point here is that, knowing the true reason why we end up having constant anxiety is very crucial in building awareness within us and being able to approach things in a healthier way — rather than just trying to run away from it or shut ourselves down so that we do not have to feel anything. After I have spent a couple of hundreds of dollars and a few months in therapy, I learned a couple of things that helped me a lot in my mental well-being.

Build more awareness on cues that triggers some uncomfortable feeling

For me, the cues can be simple as the sound of “ping” from Teams chat I am hearing in the middle of the night. It just gives me anxiety about work. The solution for this is so simple, turn off the PC after working hours or maybe turn off the volume so I will feel less triggered. It can be another thing but just cutting off that specific cues from your environment will help a lot to not to feel triggered that much.

Identify reoccurring thought patterns that are not helping to achieve your goals

For me, the thought of “I will say something weird or wrong” somewhat replays often in my head and hinder me to approach people in the first place. But, the majority of the time, it never happened and no one has pointed out about it. That fear I had was just an illusion. Just imagine how many chances have I missed because I was just scared of how others will be judging me.

Watch out for destructive behaviors that are affecting our decisions

I have been a long-time victim of being good at distracting myself with busyness. Demonizing negative emotions and feelings have been one of my bad habits. Now that I know this about myself, I am now trying to take a pause and sit in with the feeling whenever I am going through difficult emotions by asking “what am I running away from and why?”.

Everything else won’t matter if we know what truly matters to us

When I was going through burnout, I was being so hard on myself. As if my whole identity were attached to my career, and I felt like I was a failure for me not being able to meet the demand that the work has on me. But then, when I look at my life from a bigger perspective, there was always something around me or something in me that brought me joy — even though I am not doing anything. Work was just something I have spent a lot of time and energy on, but I have so many things that I give importance to which are: community, connection, and creation. Once I began to look into another side of my life, it made me feel better — because my world did not end because I burnt out.

Know your worth — not by the outcome, not by something you produce, and by your productivity

I did this exercise together with my therapist on listing down my best attributes. It was a good exercise in terms of looking myself inward, and acknowledging my good traits gives a fair amount of confidence as well — even though no one validates it. But then, I suggested asking my trusted friends about this to see how they observe me as a person and as a friend. I got a lot of surprising feedback from each person and undeniably, it made me feel so great.

“Just having you around makes me feel a lot better”

When I received this feedback from a friend, I almost cried. This is the moment I truly discovered my worth is not relying on how much I earn, how much I do, how much I work, how much I consume, or how much I buy — my worth is just as valuable even just by existing.

I have to admit that I still feel this agony at times that my internalized capitalism creeps into me all of a sudden. But I learn how to welcome her and say, “Slow down dude, it is okay. We do not have to be 120%-200% of productivity rate, okay? We can get things done without sacrificing our sanity. It is okay, we do not have to do it anymore. We can just chill and enjoy the moment, ya?”

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Originally published at https://erinne0217.wordpress.com on August 1, 2022.