By Jasper Lau

Student productivity is promoting hustle culture and workaholism. What can you do to prevent falling into the productivity trap?  

Parents and teachers constantly tell students that being hardworking  and goal-oriented is a virtue. To be hardworking, students need to be  productive and complete tasks efficiently to reach their goals and  ambitions.

The term productivity emerged in the 19th century, during the Industrial  Revolution, and is an economic concept that measures the efficiency of  labour and capital in producing products (output). Later on, people started to apply this idea to their lives, describing how efficiently they could complete a task. 

Productivity is constantly promoted in students' lives through social  media, where trending videos teach students how  to optimise their time. Photos of carefully staged desks and clean notebooks with perfect  handwriting, termed "studyspo", are frequently showcased on Instagram  pages with millions of followers. 

Our society also praises so-called “productivity masters” like Elon Musk,  the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He manages his time using  the “time blocking” method, in which he divides his day into 5-minute  slots, maximising every minute and second. Motivational quotes like “time should always be used  well to maximise personal desires” and “don’t stop when you’re tired,  stop when you’re done” are injected into students' brains. 

The problem with promoting productivity to students is that we often  don't talk about the risks and perils that productivity can lead to. Our society views productivity positively; however, it does not educate  students about the negative impacts of working hard and obsessing over productivity. 

Toxic productivity culture (TPC) is a side-effect of productivity, defined  as an obsession or addiction to being productive, which typically results  in one's self-worth being measured by one’s level of productivity. According to WebMD, toxic productivity is harmful to people's health and personal relationships and may lead to significantly higher burn-out rates, anger, depression, and anxiety. TPC may also make someone feel obsessively guilty for sleeping instead of working. Often, people with toxic productivity will go through dopamine fasting, a  process where one avoids all forms of stimulation – computer, TV, sex,  radio and even food to starve their brain of pleasure for some time. This  process claims to cleanse the brain and increase focus and productivity.

Toxic productivity leads to workaholism, describing a person who works  compulsively. The obsession with constantly being productive will lead  to someone feeling like they need to work all the time. According to Stanford researcher and author Emma Seppala, “Not only  does workaholism double the risk of depression, but it also leads to sleep problems and shortened attention spans.” 

To prevent falling into the productivity trap, students need to accept  their limited capability and understand that they don’t need to be  productive at all times. Students also need to learn how to stop comparing themselves with their peers and people on the internet who claim to be “productive”. 

Our society needs to stop promoting productivity and working tirelessly  as the only way to earn respect and succeed. To achieve this, our  community needs to stop normalising toxic productivity and  workaholism by reducing competitiveness in schools and the workplace. We also need to educate the youth on work-life balance because life  should not only be about being productive but, more importantly, about enjoying and taking pleasure in life. After all, we are not machines and  should not be measured based on how efficiently we work.