Is your work anxiety self-inflicted?

The 3 Principles of Slow Productivity as listed by Cal Newport in his book Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment are:

1. Do Fewer Things
2. Work at a Natural Pace
3. Obsess Over Quality 

On the second principle of slow productivity (Work at a Natural Pace), Cal Newport wrote that:

Our exhausting tendency to grind without relief, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, is more arbitrary than we recognize. 

It’s true that many of us have bosses or clients making demands, but they don’t always dictate the details of our daily schedules – it’s often our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster.

We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness. 

Cal then made this suggestion:

Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance. 

Reading this makes me think about how much our own personality, self-identity, past experiences and current work situation influence the way we produce our work or schedule our workload.

In a typical knowledge-based workplace, there are all kinds of working styles to adapt to. 

Example 1

If you are rather junior in the workplace hierarchy, your workload is probably not self-managed. 

You take the lead of your more senior colleagues and bosses who have become accustomed to the way things have already been done here and as a new hire, the only logical thing to do is to assimilate by following. 

So if you find yourself in a work environment where the grind is prized and associated with the nature of work, don’t be surprised if you find yourself staying in the office beyond office hours even if you could have finished the task long ago. In cases like this, work quality might drop if the optics of being seen as working hard is valued more than the actual work quality output. 

You might feel like you’re part of the workplace gang for a while, but once the shine wears off and you start thinking about the time you’re wasting to accommodate this type of working style and not actually doing the work, the inner struggle will creep in and make you question your own work fulfillment. 

Example 2

Another typical work environment one might find themselves in is one where everything is urgent and needs to be done immediately. It’s a constant fire fighting exercise. This work environment will no doubt make one more anxious, jittery and on their toes. In this case, productivity at the workplace will likely be linked to task response time and the length of time in which you’re switched on and alert to these requests. If you have been immersed in a work environment like that or are currently in it, it is quite likely that you’ll take this nature into the way you do things. 

Example 3

If you’re the Founder of your own startup and are bootstrapping your way to growth, your mind would most likely be occupied with continuous thoughts and ideas of how to reach more customers, how to improve the product, how best to work with suppliers etc. 

With so many things to deal with and being just one person, the default would be to just work through all the tasks in whatever available time one has, eventually running out of steam and being disillusioned. 

In all the three examples above, the one thing that could have improved the outcomes is to have a questioning mind about what you value. 

Example 1: 

Do I value being in a workplace that values face time over actual work output?

Example 2:

Do I value being in a workplace that keeps me jittery most of the time?

Example 3: 

Do I value doing many things at the same time or focusing my efforts on one thing at a time? 

Circling back to what Cal Newport said about “it’s often our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster”, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

Very often, we attribute our exhaustion, disillusionment and overall dissatisfaction with the circumstance, the people and the environment. 

If we take a step back to ask ourselves why we allow those factors to influence the way we feel, we might discover the true reasons for why we put ourselves in these situations.

Example 1:

Fear of not finding another job. Unwillingness to go through the job hunting process again. Might as well settle in and see how it goes.

Example 2:

Fear of being seen as incompetent or not capable of handling these urgent tasks. Fear of not being able to please the boss. 

Example 3:

Fear of being seen as not working hard enough to make the startup a success. Fear of failure.

This might be an overly simplified illustration. 

However, the purpose of this post is to make us more aware of our own agency and that we do not fall into perceived bad situations unknowingly.