Productivity guilt and the lazy label

How my inner drive to please and produce get all knotted up now that I’ve discovered what I actually want

I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of myself as lazy, yet internally I’ve long brandished it as a sort of prod or threat whenever my dedication flags. Keep going, stop being lazy. Or, look at how hard everyone else is working, don’t be lazy.

At the same time, productivity has always been the way I measured my value to the world. I didn’t use to think of it like this. Instead, I approached every opportunity that came my way as: this looks like something I’d love to try, I’ll take this on too. And then, I’d run around with my head abuzz, obsessed with how busy I was. Busy, busy, busy!

Now, after years of therapy and a lot of learning, I’ve begun to recognize how destructive this has all been—and also how programmed it is into so many of us, especially in America. In her book I Don’t Want a Job, Amie McNee talks about how, starting in the 1970s, the neoliberal movement began emphasizing the message that the harder and longer you work, the more secure you’ll be in the world — a story that became a moral imperative. She writes:

The idea that work is moral is not inherent to humanity, it is inherited from our recent history. Having an ability to work hard is not an innate sign of being a healthy or good human being. It is just a story that has grown more salient in the last few centuries. It is a lie being told to manipulate you.

So when one side of my brain — the side looking out for me, wanting me to heal, relax, or stay true to myself — sends out the signal that I don’t want to do something (a work assignment, a meeting, a networking event), the trained-rat side of my brain throws up the criticism: you’re just being lazy.

Carrying two careers

All of this is tangled with my proclivity for guilt—the pervasive worry that I’m letting everyone down or failing the world every time I stand up for what I actually want. What it boils down to: I’ve been pushing myself to keep going in directions I don’t actually want or need to go.

Right now I’m feeling the weight of all this as I’m balancing two careers. One is my 8-to-5 “day job,” a career I’ve worked thirty years to build. I’m considered a “leader” at a large, prestigious corporation. I run a big team. I make really good money, which I’m grateful for, because my family lives like people who make really good money: mortgage, Bay Area lifestyle, out-of-state college tuition. I have stock and a retirement account.

I’m so, so lucky to have this job. (Never mind that I’ve genuinely worked my ass off to get to where I am, for a long time. Obviously, it’s all about the luck!) I’ve worked at a lot of companies, and I do appreciate this one for its good people, friendly culture, and mission-driven products. I get to work from home. I’m in charge of solving interesting problems. I’m fortunate.

The second career is what I’m starting to think of as “the book business.” In the next few years, my plan is to publish a whole catalog of novels: book club fiction, romances, and mysteries. I know publishing is brutal, but my goodness does it ever push all the creative buttons I’ve been trying to figure out how to push for years. Writing great stories, building a brand, marketing to specific audiences, bringing beautiful work into the world that brings people pleasure. This is what I want to do.

Lately I’ve been feeling drained by the imperative of showing up at my day job—the one that pays, mind you—because I’m alive with excitement about my book business. Balancing both pushes all my guilt pedals constantly. When I’m working at the day job, I feel guilty about not being further along on my book business to-dos. When I’m working on book stuff, I feel like I’m cheating on my real job and mentally cataloging how I’m letting my team down.

When I look around, I see so many of my colleagues working tirelessly, speaking with passion about the work, and continuing to show up engaged. This makes my own conflicted feelings — my tiredness and emptiness when it comes to my primary career — feel even more suspect. Why am I so checked out? How can I let myself give in to this personal failing?

I’ve begun to recognize that chiding myself for being lazy and uncommitted is easier than admitting that the shape of the career I’ve worked so hard to build no longer fits me. I crave something different. I want my writing to be the thing, and the day job to be the support beam, but most days the proportions are reversed — and even on days when I can secretly sink my heart into the one and fake my way through the other, the guilt it stirs up leaves me depleted.

Changing the terms

Psychology professor Devon Price’s essay “Laziness Does Not Exist” makes a sharp case against the lazy label. He argues, in the original essay and the later book, that when we call a behavior lazy, we’ve stopped asking the real question: what’s actually going on when someone procrastinates, skips class, or falls behind? We never know what someone is dealing with — anxiety, executive-functioning struggles, mental illness, or simply the inability to excel against unreasonable expectations. He writes:

People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder.

Extend this, and it’s fair to say: choosing to fulfill the obligations of my job while pining for a different life — and putting my spirit and energy into building that life — is also not lazy. I know in my gut what I want my future life to look like, and I’m already several steps ahead in my imagination from where I am today. I’m working hard at staying compliant inside an arrangement I don’t fully embrace anymore. I’m not being lazy. I’m growing increasingly aware that I need something different.

“The fact you don’t want a job is not a personality flaw,” Amie McNee writes. Throughout the manifesto, she returns to what this kind of misalignment actually costs: “I grieve the art not made because we are exhausted from our ‘real jobs.’” And: “It is psychologically harmful to dedicate your life to something that means nothing to you.”

I’m a realist. We have to live in our house and educate our kid, and we enjoy taking lovely vacations, buying new things, and having good health insurance. American society is what it is, and to say we’re well situated within it is an understatement. I’m willing to keep making that tradeoff — I’ll work because the money means something to me, and I’ll keep doing this job because I’m good at it and care about the problems I’m solving and the people I work with.

What I vow to stop doing is dwelling on the guilt — that some days, I just don’t feel like showing up at 100%. That I might phone it in occasionally. That I may be in a bad mood, or wake up late, or wish I was doing something else. And I’ll stop killing myself to be perfect at both of the work lives I’m juggling. I’ll let myself drop a few balls, fall behind a little, be delayed, not know the answer.

I’ll stop sticking on the lazy label every time I want to rest instead of produce. Instead, I’ll give myself a little compassion. It’s okay to be tired, to wish everything was different, or to want to lie in bed a little longer. It’s not a moral failing. It’s innately human.