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On a weekday - it was one of those days in lockdown that blur into one another and, in retrospect, are difficult to separate from one another - I sat at my desk at noon and scrolled through Twitter on my phone.
I wanted to take a short break from work.
Since waking up, I'd kept up with the latest news, exercised, finished an article, and attended two online meetings.
Although I was aware that I had already achieved a lot, I was accompanied by a mélange of guilty conscience, restlessness and stress when I wiped around aimlessly on my cell phone.
Actually, I really don't have time to paddle around, I thought to myself.
Still, I continued.
I started to read one text, stopped stressed and jumped to the next, scrolled through Instagram stories, discovered some online event that reminded me that I had never attended the last ones noted on the calendar.
I made a note of the new event anyway.
At the same time, an empty Word document loomed threateningly on my computer screen that I had just opened to start an article.
The cursor kept blinking, like a finger tapping impatiently on the tabletop.
I already knew those moments when I actually wanted to take a break, but couldn't really allow myself to enjoy them.
Was it just me?
And why did I feel like this anyway?
Then I came across a poem by the Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur.
It starts like this: "I have this productivity anxiety / that everyone else is working harder than me / and I'm going to be left behind / cause I am not working fast enough / long enough / and I'm wasting my time."
- Rupi Kaur speaks of “Productivity Anxiety”, the fear of not working hard enough and therefore being left behind by others.
So that was the term I was looking for.
Maybe that worry plagued me.
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Apparently I wasn't alone in this.
In any case, that's the way Rupi Kaur felt and since her first book “Milk and Honey” she has been a literary representative of the millennials - the generation of those born between 1981 and 1996 who, according to the cliché, can never commit themselves, almost obsessively wanting to realize themselves that are often fobbed off on the job market with long-term internships and fixed-term employment contracts.
I was born in 1993 and I belong to this generation.
Some of my work colleagues and friends my age told me that they can identify with the feeling that they are not doing enough - in their private and professional life.
I wanted to learn more about Productivity Anxiety.
I came across a few articles in English on the Internet.
In it, people reported that they cannot stop working, suffer from fear of failure and cannot cope well with defeat - that sounded like signs of burnout to me.
I ask Helen Heinemann, founder of the Institute for Burnout Prevention.
“What's behind 'Productivity Anxiety' is nothing new,” she explained to me on the phone.
“This attitude towards work is one of the personality traits of people who are on the verge of burnout.” She notes that more and more young people who suffer from exhaustion are attending her seminars.
Science confirms this trend: A 2019 US study found that around half of Millennials and 75 percent of Generation Z (born 1997 or later) who quit their job in the US in 2018 do so did because of mental health problems.
Burn-out, depression and financial insecurities were the main reasons.
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Are my friends and I heading for burnout?
When I listen to my friends, it almost sounds like it.
A friend tells me that he has had difficulty relaxing at all since he started working as a freelance journalist.
He doesn't even manage to calm down at the weekend.
He constantly feels that he has to work because he has his account balance in front of his eyes: "I always think I have to get the most out of my time."
Quickly write an e-mail
Of course, one can argue that “productivity anxiety” is quite normal in the performance society in which we live.
Many people measure their worth by their job performance.
Inproductivity is often equated with failure, and people who don't succeed are quickly seen as failures.
Now that the pandemic is dominating our lives, the fear of failure may increase for some: Because work currently takes up a disproportionately large amount of space - the lockdown means that hobbies and exchanges with others are largely eliminated.
Get up in the morning, work, go for a walk, sleep - and do everything all over again the next day.
At the same time you can read about destroyed livelihoods, economic slumps and increased unemployment figures every day.
Compared to 2019, almost 430,000 more people were unemployed in the pandemic year 2020, according to the Federal Employment Agency.
The pressure to deliver at work so as not to be among those who are being reported on is increasing.
“The background to constantly improving your performance is that you want to be part of it.
We're worried about being excluded from a community, ”says the burnout expert.
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In addition, so much happens digitally.
Around 25 percent of the workforce currently work from home, according to a representative study by the digital association Bitkom in December 2020. These people maintain their professional contact mainly through video conferences and chat messages.
Your work processes are less visible because problems are solved in small groups instead of informing all colleagues about them in the group chat.
There you will find more success reports - which can give the impression that everything else is going well with everyone else.
A friend who has just started a new job experiences it very similarly.
"Since everyone is in the home office, my boss doesn't even notice how much I'm actually working," she tells me.
“I can see how many projects the other colleagues are running at the same time and that they are already sending e-mails at seven in the morning.
That puts me under pressure. ”In addition, the boundaries between work and private life become blurred when you do the work within your own four walls.
It quickly becomes a habit to answer emails after work.
This makes switching off even more difficult.
"What used to be 'FOMO' is now 'Productivity Anxiety'"
Some people feel “Productivity Anxiety” not only during their working hours, but also privately.
“You always have the feeling that you have to make something out of the day,” a friend tells me.
"When I have an hour to spare, I think that I have to use the time and should have a yoga session." A work colleague reports that she already felt the feeling at parties.
"If I hardly know any guests or if I don't really enjoy myself, I find myself thinking that I would use the time more sensibly if I were to watch a documentary or read a book in bed at home."
This can be dismissed as an urge to self-optimize or seen as an enriching change in life.
Ultimately, however, it turns even things you want to do for the sake of relaxation into items on a to-do list.
“If sport and training are done in the same way as work, it is ultimately more work.
Then even the best relaxation program is of no use, ”says Heinemann.
In conversations with acquaintances, friends and work colleagues, I notice that the word Instagram is used a lot.
A friend said, for example, that she felt pressured by seeing so many people on the platform who seem to be reading hundreds of books and practicing yoga every day.
“What used to be 'FOMO' is now 'Productivity Anxiety',” she says.
“FOMO” is the abbreviation for “Fear of Missing Out”, the fear of missing something, a term that was largely shaped by Instagram.
So many believe: Because you can't miss anything at the moment anyway, neither parties nor concerts, you have to be even more active and perform yourself.
You quickly forget that many people present themselves on platforms like Instagram the way they want to be perceived - currently as busy and therefore in demand.
Even if they may not be both.
And what can you do about productivity anxiety?
I keep catching myself trying to optimize myself.
But Heinemann believes that this is not the right way to go: “The body has to take breaks in which the physiological system can turn up and down again.” She therefore suggests setting alarms throughout the day to remind them of this to move away from the workplace.
This creates distance from the stressful situation.
"Have some tea, look up at the sky, move away from work."
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In the long term, one should check how important the work is for one personally, says Heinemann.
“Imagine that you are 100 years old and look back on your life by age.
What do you want to experience besides your work, what role should your work have played? ”I took your suggestions to heart: I've been spending my breaks on the couch since our conversation, without any blinking cursor.
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