Our Society’s Toxic Productivity Culture

THE SUNDIAL PRESS

Our Society’s Toxic Productivity Culture: A Personal Commentary

Irini Spyrou, Opinion

* to be read like a diary entry of a fed-up college student *

“Have a good break!” we say to one another whilst mentally listing our Week 10 deadlines, shoulders tightening just a little.

It’s no secret that most of us were in the top tier of our graduating classes in secondary school. I am the first to admit my high-school self smiled at my teachers in an active effort to give a good impression - I wasn’t voted most kiss-ass of the anglophone cohort for nothing. Secondary school is where my grades became my life. My parents transmitted their academic drive to me at a very young age, and I soon learned to attach a lot of my self-worth to my success in that field. It was toxic, however, because my pride wasn’t primarily based on the knowledge and abilities that I had accumulated through my efforts in the library all those nights - the number on the paper is what determined my rush or depletion of serotonin for the day, or sometimes even the week. Producing good grades was my goal in life; the knowledge was secondary.

“How are you?” * lightly traces eyebags * - “I’m exhausted.”

We’re all too familiar with this exchange, becoming more frequent as the days roll on. The pressure I previously described has not budged since the beginning of university. Despite the fact that I am studying something that genuinely interests me (most of the time that is), I still find this need to be the most work-orientated I can be. Whether I had a good day or not relies on how many pages I could get through, how many hundreds of words I could write, or how many flashcards I could make. The library breaks as we compare hours of sleep rolling our cigarettes, the dark shadows under our eyes drooping, looking with (slight or intense depending on the day) dread at the people working at the tables within.

But then that self-satisfaction comes along. After a hard day’s work with the librarian reminding us to wear our masks properly, we can strut out into the real world because we deserve to have fun now. We go home to have a hot bath, read for pleasure, or perhaps a harder vice - everyone’s fall from grace looks different.

The worst part is arguably the factor of comparison. The satisfaction is not fully relinquished if not boasted about; you go home, collapse on the sofa, turn to your flatmate (or your house plant) and let out, “you won’t believe how productive I was today.” Your morale is high, your efficiency is advertised - your superiority complex, watered?

But productivity itself is not the only factor, for its (discussable) antonym - leisure - is one which is ineligible for my case. Societally, leisure is seen as a state one must “deserve.” A balance of work and play is advertised but only fully condoned in practice when you are worn-out, weary, and on the brink of burnout. The importance of just being is largely overlooked.

Of course, I’m writing this through the lens of the very glasses tipped on my nose, and my perception currently only reaches the four walls of my room. Still, we can nonetheless all understand that our bubbles of existence belong to something bigger than ourselves.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to capital. Labour productivity, being the holy grail since the industrial revolution - the foundation that makes our society spin - is the root of the problem. In our consumerist society, the amount you work equates 12

with the amount you make in your industry, so the better quality of life you can have - simple right? Terribly wrong. To scratch even the surface of the problem, envision the perfect individual: one who wakes up at six in the morning to run 20k, just to suit-up to work for 15 hours at a desk, earn their money, and buy their happiness. That’s what most of our futures look like; but that individual who makes a substantial revenue is incapable of doing it without making the sacrifices of time imbalance, favouring his work hours, which brings us to the concept of burnout.

Burnout? You’ve definitely heard of it. Scientifically speaking it is a syndrome characterized by “emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a decrease in self-fulfilment,” - a result of chronic exposure to emotionally draining environments. According to a Forbes article I recently stumbled upon, 52% of American survey respondents declared they were experiencing some form of burnout, with Why do we condone a system where our “success” is primarily equated to the number in your bank account and not the joy/satisfaction we get from our labour. We always celebrate our societal “progress”, but why can this evolution not take place in a societal framework where one finds harmony in their activity and doesn’t ceaselessly attach their worth to the quality of their output.

We are treated like machines - but we are not! I do not agree with all of Marxist literature, but we are more than just beings existing to “sell their labour” to survive because that is ultimately why we do it. We are intellectually capable monkeys at the end of the day. We are creatures of nature and it is a crime against her to reduce our value, or those of our peers to their capacity to produce work over play. Food for thought.

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