When Productivity Becomes a Weakness

I have to make you a confession that I'm not proud of:

For a long time, even resting made me feel guilty. I had free time and immediately thought about everything I was missing by not doing something "productive".

Read something for work.

Reply to a message.

Move forward with something pending.

Plan the week.

There was always something more I could do.

And even though I was tired, I kept going. Because I had turned my ability to endure into one of my greatest strengths.

But the problem becomes very clear when you don't stop demanding from yourself at any moment. And that's when that strength becomes a weakness.

Because it's possible to sustain an intense pace for a while. The problem is when that pace stops being the exception and becomes your way of living.

Over time I understood that how I feel modifies how I act:

When I'm stressed, I make worse decisions.

I have less patience.

It's harder for me to concentrate.

And I end up demanding more from myself than necessary.

That's when I understood that something had to change. And I began to do something that was very difficult for me before:

Making space for things that didn't have an immediate result.

I returned to coaching, exercise, meditation, and reading.

I also went back to painting and coloring, simply because I like it.

Not because I have spare time. Because I understood that it's my way of recovering energy to continue doing my work well.

And if you're going through something similar, there are four things that especially helped me:

→ Schedule rest with the same importance as a meeting. If you wait to have free time, something more urgent will always appear.

→ Make space for what makes you feel good, even if you can't justify it with results. Not everything has to have immediate utility to be valuable.

→ Find something creative that has no productivity objective. For me it was painting and coloring. I didn't have to improve at it, or turn it into anything. The goal is simply to enjoy it.

→ Think of rest as an investment in your performance. When you rest better, you also decide better, have more energy, and work with more clarity.

I'm still learning to do these things without feeling guilty.

But I no longer see caring for my energy as something separate from my work, but as one of the most important parts to keep growing.