Karin Wildheart

The conventional approach to productivity

Have you ever had thoughts like:

“I have to work really hard to be successful.”
“If something feels really fun and easy, it doesn’t ‘count’ as work so it won’t help me move forward on my goals.”
“If I focus my efforts on feeling good, I’ll never get anything done. I’d just sit on the couch and eat snacks and watch TV for the rest of my life.”
“Who do you think you are to have fun during the workday?”
*Physically feeling tense/stressed when you go to have fun or relax during Standard Business Hours Monday-Friday 9–5*
“Napping couldn’t possibly help you make money! It will make it harder! You’ll get behind!”
“It’s Saturday, but I wasn’t that productive this week, so I should really make the most of today.”
“It’s nighttime, but I wasn’t that productive today, so I should get a few more things done before I go to bed.”
“If I let myself feel too good right now, I won’t be motivated to make the changes I want to make.”

I would be surprised if any adult in my society *hasn’t* had these thoughts at some point.

Our society’s approach to the relationship between work and feeling good could not be more wrong.

The “standard” approach: Feeling good is a reward — you have to earn your way up to it through hard, often joyless work. You “put in the time” to eventually deserve the right to rest, relax, and have fun. Pressuring yourself serves a function and when the task is complete, you’ll take the pressure off then.

Pressure is a habit of the body, not a result of your to-do list

I’m sorry to tell you it doesn’t work like that. What you build from pressure must be sustained and maintained through more pressure. Even once you’d achieved your goals using this approach, you’d still feel more and more pressure to accomplish more and more because feeling constant pressure is a habit of your body.

“Protestant work ethic” thoughts like the list above are deep, old habitual thoughts engrained in us since childhood that are both the cause and effect of feeling tension in the body. When your body is relaxed enough it’s simply not possible to generate these thoughts. It’s incompatible. I tend to see everything in terms of infinity signs, so here are two:

How feeling good makes you more effective and productive

When you prioritize feeling good in your body, your relaxed, nourished body generates high quality thoughts and impulses. Think intuitive nudges, synchronicities, following a gut instinct, being in the right place at the right time, ideas for working smarter not harder. You can’t work for those things; you must receive them. You can only receive them if you’re in a receptive state.

Stress is not a receptive state. It is a braced state of the body — protective, shutting things out or shutting them down, repression. Stress is contraction rather than expansion.

If you constantly place your focus on feeling good and expansive, the rest can’t help but fall into place. You can’t burn out when you regularly feel amazing. Your ideas are better. You never run out of inspiration. People are attracted to your groundedness and self-trust because they can tell you’re different from 90% of people they meet, and they like being around someone who is happy and not trying to get something from them. The list goes on and on.

Feeling good is *more* important if you’re ambitious

Furthermore, you physically can’t sustain the level of action needed to achieve a giant goal when you hold your pleasure hostage until the work’s done. It takes stamina to stick with a long, ambitious journey. Over the long term, you just won’t have enough dopamine to be resilient and persevere enough to build needed momentum if you keep telling yourself “Feeling good isn’t important. Just do it!” and forcing yourself onward through bodily resistance.

Without joy, rest, celebration, fun, and play ALONG THE WAY (not just in the imagined future we never let ourselves actually *feel*), we are easily bumped off the path. At setbacks, we spin out and just fluctuate between feeling bad and feeling worse, all without making meaningful, sustained progress on the things that matter to us.

Sometimes (speaking from experience) we even spin out after moments of SUCCESS because we haven’t integrated feeling successful and it feels scary and foreign and unsafe and we won’t honor those feelings, instead trying to ignore and push past them.

It can turn into a Catch-22 (the opposite of an infinity symbol? The infinity symbol’s evil twin?) We won’t let ourselves stop and have “frivolous” fun because supposedly it’s “irresponsible.” But without fun, we’re too burned out to make progress on what matters most to us. How responsible is it to refuse to choose what would actually help? (I’m talking about refusing to prioritize fun!) We end up in circular thoughts and circular patterns of movement, stressing but unable to move forward.

If your goals are small or nonexistent, you can just force yourself through one day before you get to go back to bed. Ever asked “How are you?” and heard back “I’m just getting through the day”? Tell me you don’t have a higher vision for your life without telling me you don’t have a higher vision for your life. Just getting through the day doesn’t sound like there’s much room for play and joy. If you want to achieve exceptional things, it’s absolutely *essential* to have fun and play and celebrate. The higher your aspirations, the more true this is.

What if you’re in survival mode?

And if you really are just trying to survive — I hear that. There’s no morality associated with this. It’s not better or worse morally to be in survival mode vs. higher vision mode. Sometimes it’s all we can do to just get through a day, or a year, or a whole season. Of course, if you’re in survival mode, you need fun more than anyone. Laughter and joy can save your life. Giving yourself permission to prioritize them is one of the kindest things you can do for your mental health.

What if instead of holding your emotions hostage to your productivity (as in, refusing to let yourself be happy until you’ve completed tasks), you allowed yourself to feel peace and satisfaction and let your productivity flow out of that? Or better yet, you chose to go out of your way to fill your life with fun and peace?

I have tried it, and it’s truly a high. Ideas that float in naturally are much better and more abundant than ones generated through pressure and effort while sitting at a desk. Other parts of my life have started “randomly” clicking into place. For example, packing for a recent trip felt easier than ever. I was proud of how light my luggage was while still containing everything I really need (it’s an ongoing goal of mine to pack minimally).

I’m not saying it’s easy to suddenly make a giant change. Habits can take time to shift. This process has taken me years, and I’m still in it. But how cool is it that prioritizing feeling good pays such dividends in all parts of your life, including the work you find meaningful? That prioritizing fun makes you more productive?

Ready to tap into good feelings as fuel for your productivity?

If you would like some support breaking the addiction to hustle culture / the “Protestant work ethic” / constant underlying productivity stress… this is the work I love to do. I would love to help you achieve your goals (or simply live your life) from a place of fun and peace instead of spinning out in self-pressuring (like I did for too many years).

Come say hello on Instagram and sign up to receive my emails so I can send you stories and tips on how to fuel your life with pleasure instead of pressure.

Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash