Recovering from “productivitis”
In December, I retired after working thirty-seven years in the mental health sector. I had been thinking about retirement for a while. After I passed sixty, my musings about retirement took a serious turn.
My mother died when she was sixty-one (the age I am now) and my father died when he was eighty-two. Except for my mother, the checking out point for my family (on both sides) was somewhere in the mid-eighties, give or take a few years. According to these numbers, I may have twenty to twenty-five years left, barring any unforeseen circumstances. I decided that I wanted to retire when I had decent health and I could still enjoy myself.
I did struggle with the exact timing of my retirement. I asked a friend about how did he know when it was time to retire? His answer?, “ You will know when it is time”. His Zen like answer puzzled me and then I forgot about it. I forgot about his answer until the day I realized it was time to retire. He was right!
I am now into my second month of retirement. I appreciate the time I have to reflect and ponder the big questions of life. I started working on the writing projects I had put off because I was too busy “working”. I enjoy the leisurely pace that my days have undertaken.
There is one thing that has been troubling me. I enjoy having a much slower, less intense pace of life, but I feel guilty for not being more productive. Now that I have all this “free time” I should do something productive with my time.
I should pump out a blog post every day.
I should get up at 5:00 am every day just because I can be more productive.
I should plan my objectives for that day.
I should, I should, I should.
Then I realized that I was dealing with “productivitis”! The overwhelming need to be and to feel productive. If I am not something useful and productive every waking hour of my day, I become guilty. This my friends is “productivitis”. Productivitis runs rampant in our society. I would almost say it is an obsession.
Who of you hasn’t seen articles extolling the virtues of being more productive. Accompanying the article is a list of ten (or fifteen, or twenty, or fifty) ways that you can increase your productivity.
There are books, seminars, podcasts and training workshops that will show you how you can be more productive. Productivity experts are eager to impart their wisdom to you as long as you pay for it.
It surprised me to learn that there is a “productivity industry” that has existed for sometime. The push to be more productive has been with us since the Industrial Revolution, which makes sense. Once the factory came into being, the push to move more product out the door at the lowest cost possible became to focus of business pratice. The advent of computers and technology has expanded the work week to seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the pressure to do more has never been greater.
Yeah, so?, you are thinking. That’s the way it is, you say. You implore me to go back to my rocking chair and quit my belly aching.
Perhaps I am getting bent out of shape over nothing. But I don’t think I am getting bent out of shape over nothing. The fact I feel guilty because I am not doing anything says something. Productivitis has it hooks into me and it is not prepared to let go. I realize it is going to be a tough journey of recovery from productivitis. Lucky for me, I have a lot of time to recover.
