Productivity De-Programming

As we enter Fall - which has throughout my life been my most productive season - I am revisiting productivity. It's been nearly five months since I wrote about this  - at the end of April I published how I was once a productive person and living in a global pandemic had killed that vibe - but writing about productivity and how to be productive and maximizing productivity are topics I have visited many times on this blog, in a let me show you my ways way. 

Now I'm coming at it from a fuck my ways way. 

Since the end of March I've spent a lot of time considering where my desire to be constantly productive comes from, what my feelings of accomplishment are tied to, what a good little cog I've been in a capitalist wheel. I've wondered if the extreme exhaustion I feel now is a slow release of air from years of over productivity - of working at a job and filling my mornings and nights and lunches with marking shit off of my lists. Of Saturdays and Sundays not sitting down until I felt like I earned it. Ground down by the grind. 

Why do we feel like rest is the thing that needs to be earned? 

I have been following The Nap Ministry for a while, but I've only been super attuned to it over the past year. It sounds like a cult, but what it has felt like most to me is de-programming. Lowering my expectations of productivity to make room for rest and joy. Don't get me wrong - I still get joy from getting things done, but I am also getting joy from resting and doing nothing before everything is done. I know this is standard for many of you, but it's revolutionary for me. In the past I would not have allowed myself to do that UNLESS everything I wanted and needed to do was done. 

Last week I got up earlier a few days and knocked off like 8-10 house things on my to do list before work, worked, and did the same at night. One of those days was out of necessity - I was still running a vacation rental property and there are tasks that are associated with that that you cannot fuck off on. But the other days it was like getting a fix of that old productivity and going back for more even though I knew I was wearing myself out. I got a shit load done but by Friday night I was so tired I could only sit there with my teeth in my mouth and most of Saturday I gravitated to the couch too after errands. Because I did not let some things ride and crammed as many things as I could into a few time periods even though they were not urgent items, I was mostly not in a good place to enjoy my true free off-work weekend time. That's ridiculous. To think I worked myself like that as a standard for years - and that I am still inclined to do so if I do without thinking - is a good example of just because I can do things, doesn't mean I should. 

I've talked about the value of rest for years, but practicing what I preach has only been happening with regularity this year. At first it was because I was stunned into inactivity and now it's because I'm battling myself for a better balance. A true, lived balance. Not one I suggest for others and proceed to ignore for myself.

How are you making out?