Today is the first day in a while that I have nothing to do. I woke up at 12:00, actually got out of bed at 13:00, felt terrible about doing nothing the entire day, and then confronted my own toxic views and attitude towards the concept of productivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Okay, let\u2019s backpedal a bit. I first want to state that I have done almost zero research for this, besides watching a single video essay, but it\u2019s been a thought that\u2019s been taking up space in my mind for a while now. Especially today, because of the aforementioned having nothing to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I usually think that my work life balance is pretty decent. In my first year of aerospace, I immediately gave up all cares about high grades, and instead tried to focus on passing things while maintaining a semi-decent mental health and good social life. Excepting some rough patches, this has largely worked out for me. So when I talk about an unhealthy relationship with productivity, this does not necessarily mean that I\u2019m addicted to studying. What it does mean, is that I\u2019ve started to notice that I\u2019m getting more and more obsessed with my downtime being productive in some way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like most people around me, I\u2019ve been in a pretty constant battle with my screentime from about the moment that I first got a phone. Recently, instead of thinking about how to reduce my screentime, I\u2019ve been thinking about why I care so much about it. What is so inherently evil about that little rectangle in my pocket that using it makes me feel so bad about myself? How is it different from watching tv each night when I was small?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that it mostly boils down to the feeling that I\u2019m wasting time. <\/em>I could be using this time that I\u2019m spending on youtube doing other things, like knitting, or hanging out with friends, or writing. The thing that distinguishes these activities from doomscrolling is that they feel productive. In fact, sometimes I can trick myself into feeling productive by doing things that I would usually do on my phone on my laptop instead, because that \u2018doesn\u2019t count\u2019 somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I like feeling productive. What\u2019s the harm in that? It brings me back to today, where I felt terrible about myself the entire day because I was doing nothing. In fact, the whole reason I started writing this article was to feel like I accomplished something. I even catch myself thinking \u2018well, if I rest now, it energizes me so I can do more later\u2019, which is just trying to rest in the most efficient way, which is insane. I used to get so annoyed at a friend of mine who said \u2018I only really wind down when I\u2019m journalling, I can\u2019t imagine being on my phone the whole day\u2019, because it sounded so pretentious to me, but here I am doing the exact same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m spending all of my time chasing some imaginary accomplishment. Like if I watch a movie instead of a sitcom, and knit while watching tv, it will bring me some sense that I\u2019m living my life \u2018correctly\u2019. I\u2019m not even sure what I\u2019m supposed to be \u2018producing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think productivity is just another way of forcing people to conform to the norms and values set by society. Humans are supposed to \u2018produce\u2019, they\u2019re supposed to serve the end of, let\u2019s face it, kapitalism. When I write this out, it also strikes me how incredibly ableist this all is. If we link out value as tied to our productivity, how do we treat people who are unable to achieve this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to engage in my hobbies because I like them, not because they make me feel like I\u2019m living my life according to some capitalist standard of correctness. I want to go on walks because they make me feel good, not because it makes me feel good to look at my stepcounter afterwards. By god, I want to do nothing today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the first day in a while that I have nothing to do. I woke up at 12:00, actually got out of bed at 13:00, felt terrible about doing nothing the entire day, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2468,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}