Productivity Anxiety: The “Peak Performance” Trap That Hurts the Bottom Line
Ever feel like no matter how much you accomplish, it's never enough? That no matter how long or hard you work, you’re not efficient enough, effective enough, productive enough, even good enough? This is “productivity anxiety.”
Crappy feeling, right? It’s also a crappy way to build your career, especially if you aspire to or are already in a leadership position. Below is a quick break down of how productivity anxiety starts, derails careers, and evidence-based actions to address it.
WHAT PRODUCTIVITY ANXIETY IS
The compulsive need to be constantly productive, paired with the persistent fear that your efforts are inadequate.
It’s the fear of falling behind, of being judged, of professional irrelevance.
It’s your self-worth tied up in how much you get done.
WHAT PRODUCTIVITY ANXIETY IS NOT
It is not the same as a healthy motivation to do your best or level up in your career.
It is not the same as “good stress”.
Good stress is the short-term drive that helps promote growth. It’s the butterflies before you ask someone out, or go to a job interview, or step on stage for the presentation. It readies you for action, then subsides. This is not chronic stress.
It’s not burnout, as WorkHuman notes. Burnout is technically a workplace phenomenon. Productivity anxiety can come from work or non-work obligations or perceived failure to meet personal goals.
PRODUCTIVITY WARNING SIGNS
Inability to focus
Exhaustion
Sleep problems
Headaches
Muscle aches or tension
Constant worrying
Chronic busyness
PTO guilt
Mood swings
Negative self-talk
Cynicism
Apathy
Lack of joy
Self-worth tied to output/productivity
Feeling like nothing is in your control (sometimes coupled with everything feeling like it’s your responsibility)
Procrastination
Task avoidance
Distraction seeking
Working long hours
Perfectionist tendencies
Micromanaging
Not delegating
Allowing work to edge out basic hygiene and other self-care practices like exercise, sleep, or time with friends/family.
Essentially, it’s the extreme signs of chronic stress, of overwhelm. We respond to stress via “fight, flight, freeze, fawn” patterns. Sometimes just one, sometimes we cycle through. For example, you might fight first, but if that isn’t working out, you might fawn, and so on. Eventually, you might just figuratively play dead by hiding in the bathroom for a while or adopting Gen Z’s “bed rotting” trend.
PRODUCTIVITY ANXIETY EFFECTS
As you can imagine, none of that is good. It isn’t hard to connect the dots between the list above and negative outcomes at work and home. For example, the downstream effects of productivity anxiety mean reduced performance and increased absenteeism, likely increased health costs (physically and mentally).
The costs? Well, general job stress alone costs American companies over $300 billion a year due to health costs, absenteeism, and reduced performance, according to stats via UMASS Lowell. Additionally:
40% of job turnover is due to stress
50% increase in healthcare expenditures for workers with high levels of stress
$3.6 million/year in absenteeism costs to a large company on average
47% of employees say the majority of their stress comes from work
77% of employees believe work-related stress negatively impacted their mental health
71% of employees believe work-related stress caused the end of a personal relationship (e.g. divorce)
*Stats via UMass Lowell and Stress.org.
Again, that’s broad stress, stress that might be chronic but hasn’t necessarily crossed into productivity anxiety territory. So, we can deduce that productivity anxiety is expensive personally and professionally.
And I haven’t even mentioned the emotion contagion effect. In brief, that means that your stress spreads to others—colleagues, wife, kids, barista, etc. So, when you feel it, they feel it. And it makes for an unpleasant environment, not to mention hits your reputation as a colleague and either a future or current leader.
PRODUCTIVITY ANXIETY & LEADERSHIP
Your reputation is what people say about you when you leave the room, essentially. We all have one, and it goes without saying we want ours to be good. We’d like it to reflect the best version of us. But it doesn’t always.
One reason is that when we are under stress, we change. We all do. We are all human. Some change more than others, though, because they have not learned how to manage themselves under pressure. Their emotions get the better of them. In the Hogan Assessments terminology, they derail.
When you derail, your stress drives you to lean too hard on your habits. The very patterns or skills, or strengths that normally make you effective, can start working against you. That might mean acting too controlling, pulling away to avoid conflict, second-guessing every decision for fear of making the wrong one, or pushing people so hard that they tune you out and you alienate the very people you need on your side.
So, not ideal. Peer-reviewed research has found:
Direct correlations between toxic leadership behaviors and increased employee turnover intention.
Significant associations between poor leadership and reduced job satisfaction, motivation, and performance.
Clear links between toxic leadership and increased psychological distress among employees, with a cascade of further effects from that distress.
Your patience shortens, your decision-making suffers, your risk tolerance changes, your creativity and innovation change, your ability to plan strategically rather than put out the daily fires suffers, and the meeting cadence or quality might change too as a result of your stress levels.
There are many interwoven factors, so it’s hard to put a hard number on it, but again, we can deduce that poor leadership hits the bottom line many times over. No one wants to be that person.
ACTIONS TO TAKE TO CURB PRODUCTIVITY ANXIETY
Clarify the definition of productivity with yourself and your team.
Ask yourself if you’re working on the right things, the most important tasks for the priorities at hand. Not everything can be a priority. And ensure you are creating a work environment where your subordinates can ask you for clarification on priorities when there is confusion.
Challenge perfectionist thoughts: remember, excellence and perfection are not the same thing. As a recovering perfectionist, I tell myself, “good enough to move on.”
Set realistic goals and have someone who can provide objective feedback to you when you are stretching yourself too thin. Someone who can say, “is that really realistic?”
Celebrate progress, not just completion, with yourself and your team.
Break large, overwhelming tasks down into bite-sized chunks. Focus on that first bite, or step.
View challenges and setbacks as data for learning rather than permanent failures.
Rethink breaks as productivity tools, not productivity failures. This is true for vacations as much as for small breaks throughout the day.
There are many more small actions you can experiment with, but these will give you a starting point.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Productivity anxiety may initially masquerade as dedication, but it undermines the very performance you’re aiming to enhance. It also creates barriers to effective leadership skills that can advance careers and limit the impact you have on your field.
The professionals who recognize this pattern and address it will have a significant competitive advantage. They'll be able to sustain high performance through strategic thinking, emotional regulation, and team leadership capabilities that mid-level and senior roles demand. So, your move. Which action above will start this week?
Ready to trade productivity anxiety for sustainable high performance? The research shows these strategies work, but only if you implement them consistently. We can help. Schedule a 15-minute consultation here to learn how.