Getting off the hamster wheel of toxic productivity

Eight years ago, as a newly qualified Irish nurse, it was a common scenario for me to work seven twelve-hour night shifts in a row. I didn’t think about it at the time as I was in my mid-twenties, eager-to-please, and didn’t really have many boundaries around my wellbeing. By working seven nights I was guaranteed seven nights off, and I saw this as a positive aspect at the time. The thing that many healthcare professionals might relate to though is that seven nights on can be so physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing that you spend the best part of that week off trying to recover. It’s akin to being in a perennial state of nauseating jetlag. By the time you recover you’re thrown back on the conveyor belt again. I remember one nightshift feeling particularly emotionally vulnerable as I had only slept for three hours that day and I had an overwhelmingly large work-load. Despite how internally exhausted I felt, I put on my professional hat as I always did. I smiled, demonstrated patience, and just concentrated on getting through the shift: I used to satirically joke that my part of my job title was being a punch bag for the HSE. When I subtly opened up to a senior nurse about the shift being tough, she responded with a vacuous “Yeah that’s nursing. Get used to it.” My words were shoved straight back down my throat and I swallowed the painful lump that came with it. I was silenced and my feelings were invalidated.

It was in that moment that my rose-tinted glasses were removed and I realised that this was the broken culture that I had stepped into. One that is so obsessed with bed management that it fails to truly support the ones who are hunched over like Atlas carrying its buckling weight. One that is rife with healthcare professionals feeling vulnerable yet are conditioned to ‘just get on with it’. Nursing is a job where you would imagine the mental health of staff is a top priority. Ultimately, my experience in working in the profession over the past number of years has led me to believe the opposite. It is a beautiful, caring vocation that I still feel drawn to (with far greater boundaries) but there is honestly still an underlying parasitic stigma that eats away at its core. That is the stigma that you wear your stress, exhaustion, and feelings of burnout like a badge of honour. The term ‘healthcare heroes’ only amplified this to a greater extent. Despite all its lovely, kind intentions, I couldn’t help but feel that it denied our ability to be vulnerable humans as it reinforced the identity of having to be invincible. God forbid you ever seeing Superman crying in the corner of a cubicle and wiping his tears with his cape because he was having a bad day!

In my opinion the cultural obsession with work and toxic productivity permeates not just nursing but society in general. There is more of a commodified emphasis on wellbeing and self-care these days yet the balance of power is still in favour of the person who stays extra hours after work. They’re the ones most likely to get a promotion. Quotes like ‘rise and grind’ and ‘never quit’ are plastered sweepingly across the internet, gyms, and facilities everywhere reminding us that we are humans doing, not human beings. The person who is seen working nine-to-five and has multiple side projects after work is considered balanced. The Mother who juggles a full-time job, a house, and still looks like she stepped off the cover of Vogue has the most Instagram likes and followers. Is it any wonder people favour productivity over rest? Like Pavlovian dogs, we are led to believe that this is how society will reward us. This is the ideal extrinsic picture of success.

The question is: have we lost ourselves on this hamster wheel of toxic productivity? Are we living to work or are we working to live?  While I fully believe in the importance of having some form of productivity and staying active, it’s very easy to lean into the tipping scales of letting this productivity consume us. Living on purpose is one thing, but when our purpose becomes our sole sense of worth, that is another.

This is not a modern phenomenon either. Historically and culturally, there are references of placing productivity on a pedestal that have moulded and shaped societal views of it today. For example, the 16th Century birthed ‘the protestant work ethic’ which placed high value on hard work and productivity and low value on those who did not work or work hard enough.  In German sociologist Max Weber’s book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he argues that the roots of capitalism today may have been linked to this Puritan work ethic. Personally, I believe it was a multi-faceted evolution but capitalism in itself is a strong reason for many people favouring work-productivity over rest today.

I can think of countless influencers who utilise their social media platforms to showcase their financial success and they equate it to their non-stop work ethic. You see it everywhere in corporate fields too. Highly successful figures such as Elon Musk have been quoted on Twitter saying things like “Nobody ever changed the world on 40-hours a week.” Bill Gates similarly has been reported saying “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” If this is the attitude of the hierarchy on top, is it any surprise it siphons down to those at the bottom of the corporate food chain?

Then 2020 came, and knocked the socks off everything everyone knew about productivity. The world scrambled and scurried as we tried to figure out how we could maintain the work-horse lifestyle as before. The value society placed on the extrinsic values of success drifted away amongst the blizzard of breaking-news bulletins. Reality hit hard on the things that really matter in life. Heavy, heart-breaking images of people dying in Bergamo reminded us that our health truly is our wealth. And that life is devastatingly fickle and short. Intrinsic values like family and wellbeing became more important for so many. With all the grief, heart-ache, and existential angst that it brought; it also carried with it a dawning realisation. There was a universal sigh of relief, as in a strange way many people felt they could breathe for the first time. We had a certain amount of permission to stop and get off the hamster wheel of productivity. As disorientating and chaotic to routines as that was, we didn’t have to be as outwardly productive or make excuses for not socialising. It was okay to go slow. It was okay to be mindful. If Times Square could stand still, then perhaps we could too. This was a harrowing time that brought up an equal measure of doubt and despair, but out of the darkness grew a glimmer of change as for the first time in memorable history the scale was tipped from toxic productivity to staying-at-home and living mindfully.

Something that was highlighted during this time was that the flexible way in which many people wanted to work was no longer congruent with the outdated nine-to-five Victorian model we have been using. When LinkedIn conducted a survey of more than 5,000 users over two weeks it was found that since the pandemic, almost half of all respondents reported that hours & location flexibility, and work-life balance respectively, had become more important to them. If there is one lesson that can mark this zeitgeist it’s this: we can still be productive with less hustle and more harmony; less grind and more grounding. Now that society has opened up again, let’s not forget this valuable lesson we learned during the pandemic.

Perhaps we can be the generation to close this Pandora’s box of toxic productivity and truly realise the importance of wellbeing. How time and energy is a precious resource more lucrative than gold which deserves to be spent more on worthwhile intrinsic values. To change this within healthcare, corporations and other large industries will be a greater summit but for now, shifting the mindset to think differently about what productivity means to us is a start. As the recently passed, great ambassador of mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, once said “Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.”