Productivity Isn’t Maturity

A therapist explains why there’s more to growing up than completing your to-do list

Photo: We Are/Getty Images

How do you measure real growth? As a therapist, this is a question I ask each of my clients. Because when we don’t have an answer, we tend to borrow society’s narratives about success and maturity.

One of these narratives is the belief that accomplishing more makes you more of a grown up. When we choose to live by this tenet of hustle culture, we often feel like we’re failing when our to-do list is unending, or when a peer has a more impressive resume.

The truth is that productivity is often more about regulating stress than it is about living a thoughtful, responsible life. So many of us use being busy, or what I call “anxious doing,” to calm ourselves down.

“Anxious doing” could look like:

• Overfunctioning for people who don’t actually need help.
• Completing unimportant tasks to avoid anxious thoughts.
• Striving to look impressive or “keep up” with others.
• Measuring success by how busy or tired you are.

When you use productivity to manage anxiety, it can become difficult to be more intentional about how you spend your time. This is because turning off your “anxious doing” requires you to put up with some distress. You’ll have to let people do things less efficiently than you might. Or watch other people succeed at things that you don’t value. You also have to learn that taking a break, or moving more slowly, isn’t always procrastination or laziness.

People move towards real maturity when they begin to turn their anxiety into curiosity. Their time more closely resembles their best thinking about who they’re trying to be, and what’s really important to them. They can be more objective about how much they can actually do in a day. And when they scroll past other’s definitions of success and happiness, they don’t lose sight of their own values and beliefs.

Have you been using your to-do list or your resume to evaluate your growth as a human? What would it look like to begin to create a kinder, more flexible definition of a good day, or a good life? When you lead with your best thinking, instead of your anxiety, you may find that a fulfilling life is full of unfinished tasks.