Outwardly performing brilliantly in a high-profile role, Ariana* races through her days. When her baby sleeps, she jumps on calls, replies to messages, sometimes squeezing in a few exercises to try to stay fit. When the baby wakes, the loop begins again. Despite exhaustion, Ariana holds herself to her internal standards of high output and pace.
Many media commentators have labelled this way of living “the cult of productivity”. It’s compounded by popular “hustle culture” – do more and do it faster!
In our work we increasingly see people struggling not because they are failing at productivity and hustle, but because they are succeeding at it too well.
Phil* sought guidance after a health scare. A successful senior manager at a national health service (this irony wasn’t lost on him), his days were always hectic with back-to-back meetings, a huge team to manage, and operational duties that made it difficult for him to take time off. Despite noticing more fatigue and slowed decision-making, Phil struggled to prioritise his rehab.
Murray* reached out after experiencing debilitating panic attacks at work. Professionally successful, he was juggling a complex workload with a busy blended family and caring responsibilities for an ageing parent. “I know I’m in that sandwich generation trap – working, looking after kids and an elderly parent – but I don’t think I can make it all fit together”.
All three described a similar pattern: a strong internal drive to be productive, combined with daily habits of doing everything at pace. For Ariana, there was genuinely little slack in the system. For Phil and Murray, some flexibility existed. But psychologically, for all of them, any solutions felt unavailable. In this they are not alone.
For them and, in fact, many of us, we see this pattern clearly in other people but rarely in ourselves. We spot the signs a colleague is burning out, a friend is chronically over-committed, or when a partner is running on fumes. We offer wise counsel: breathe, slow down, delegate, take a break, rest, be kinder to yourself. Yet logic evaporates when it comes to our own lives – none of us can read the label from inside the bottle.
Here’s the psychological trap: our business feels necessary, virtuous and inescapable. Other people need boundaries. We just need to push through.
Our clients, and many people, have grown up absorbing powerful messages that productivity equals worth. In business especially, endurance, grit and “pushing through” are rewarded. Hustle culture ignores exhaustion, or glamorises it. Over time this becomes our default operating system and, when everyone is doing it, it stops being a choice.
How then, do we create alternatives?
One first shift is to reframe a productivity mindset as an over-used strength. Strengths like drive, reliability, high standards and responsiveness can make us successful and effective. But applied rigidly and without counterbalance, strengths can dominate. For Ariana, Murray and Phil, reframing started with curiosity – when is this strength helpful for me, and are there alternatives? What might happen if rest, restoration, reflection, play or “idleness” were injected into my day?
Learning to value other strengths requires another shift: loosening rigid beliefs. Moving away from black-and-white rules (“more is better”, “I should push through”, “rest is earned”) and toward more flexible assumptions (“recovery has value in its own right”, “not everything needs to be optimised” or “a slower pace can be legitimate, not lazy”).
Generating flexibility matters because if rest is solely justified to become more productive, we never truly rest at all. Of course it helps sustain productivity but that’s not the end goal.
A third shift is experimentation: curiously testing small changes or new ways of being. Ariana tested: “What happens if I stop 10 minutes earlier? Leave one thing undone? Take a lunch break?” Murray tried out finishing work an hour earlier some days to create a buffer for himself before family duties. Phil asked his operation team what he could delegate so he could properly engage in rehab, testing a new belief, “it is reasonable for others to step up”.
For now, Ariana, Phil and Murray see creating alternatives not as a radical life redesign but rather a way to free space in a system that has become too tightly wound.
If they decided to shake things up in the future, we recommended Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks. Drawing on his premise that there will always be more to do than can possibly fit into a human lifetime, Burkeman writes: “Let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today.”
Letting impossible standards crash can be liberating. Sometimes the most radical act in a culture obsessed with doing is simply learning how to be. Our clients’ deeper lesson is simple but not easy: play and recovery are not contingent on finishing the list (it will never be finished, and that’s OK).
*All clients are fictional amalgams
