Peaceful Productivity

Toxic productivity is an incessant inclination to be busy and in the throes of doing and accomplishing in most moments, ultimately interfering with well-being. It’s a culture and way of working that has become ever-present. You could even say that it’s what’s become expected of us as professionals, as parents, as people.

Yet just because it’s become the norm doesn’t mean it’s “normal.” And it’s certainly not healthy, or sustainable.

The picture of productivity

In the university courses I teach on learning, coping, and happiness, when I ask students about workload and well-being, just about every hand goes up to share their exhaustion. In the learning strategy groups I offer to learners, parents, and educators, the response is identical. Most of us, myself included, feel that it’s an era of overdoing, overreaching, overextension, and, indeed, overwhelm.

Until recently, the focus has largely been on the cost of lost productivity. Now, the conversation is emphasizing the cost of unchecked productivity. Parents, professionals, and students frequently tell me about their challenges with how much there is to do, feeling too stressed to get started, and the toll that getting through life’s demands has on their sleep, relationships, psychological well-being, and physical health.

The times are a-changing

Thankfully, the calls for change―for rest, for play, for pleasure, and for ease―are getting louder. Changemakers include Tricia Hersey whose works, Rest is Resistance (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) and The Nap Ministry (a community organization), are highlighting the necessity (and radicalness) of taking nonproductive breaks and escapes to swap doing for being.

My own TEDx talk, “How to get from to-do to done,” discusses how to cultivate a more honest and humane relationship with our task lists, and that underlying sense of urgency.

A nontoxic approach

When we think of productivity as just the number of tasks done in a certain amount of time, it hides important aspects of productivity, including planning, reflecting, and pausing.

Dana Daniels, founder of Blue Sky Learning, a neurodivergent coaching and consulting business defines non-toxic productivity as “a celebratory process of the process itself and not the final product.” And this is a key feature of this peaceful paradigm shift, focusing on effort, energy, and encounters along a project’s trajectory, not solely the end accomplishment.

When Marc Proudfoot, ADHD coach and owner of Proudfoot Education Coaching Advocacy (PECAT) works on a task, he zeroes in on the qualities of meaningfulness and fulfillment, and aims to engage in conversation, connection, and ideation; he calls these “the antitheses of toxicity.”

Productivity pushback

Our to-do lists are not just filled by others’ demands. Even those we initiate, says Proudfoot, can be toxic. “I may have a list of items I would like to accomplish. While the tasks may be purposeful, I may not have to complete them all at a given point, neglecting to take the time needed for exercise, sleep, or meditation,”

Challenging consequences

For those new to the term “toxic productivity,” it can sound unrealistic or impossible to imagine any other way. And yet, burnout―a tangible result of overdoing and overwhelm―is real and on the rise.

That tension between naming and taming stress can be hard to heal. Burnout, says Daniels, isn’t just common: “It markets into a prideful hustle culture where we abandon ourselves to showcase talent, exceed expectations, push through impossible standards, and disregard the human experience of rest and recovery.”

This article was originally published in the May 2025 issue of alive magazine.