Doing vs Being: The Trouble with Letting Productivity Stand in For Love

It's time for a separation from the part of my identity that has become super-sized so that the slower and gentler parts have room to expand and grow.

A good friend of mine calls me a “can-do woman.” It is such an ingrained part of my identity to be productive, to rack up the achievements, to check everything off my to-do list no matter how long it takes (12 items, 20 items? No worries!) As a hard-working wife and mother with a demanding career and devoted daughter, sibling and friend, I was the consummate juggler of all the things all at once.

For a long time I couldn’t imagine any other way to be in the world.

I was the little girl who would tremble at handing over to my parents a report card that did not have a row of straight A’s. I was the high school student who sought to please my teachers with the best-written essays. I was the college student who balanced a double major and editing the student newspaper. I was the dedicated reporter and business copywriter, pushing myself harder than any client. And I was the wife who became the sole breadwinner for nearly the entirety of her marriage.

I know that I am not alone, especially among women, to attempt to pull off this juggling act. But in a feat of courage I sometimes still marvel at, I left the big tent. I ended my marriage. I quit the performance. I no longer cared about applause from the spectators. Finally, I wanted to cheer for me.

That’s easier said than done. Productivity has a fierce hold on me. I am relentless in the demands I put on myself even now when the only person I need to support financially and emotionally is myself. Letting go of responsibilities, obligations and commitments—whether self-imposed or expected by others—is the challenge I am working on these days. I am adding a drop or two of “irresponsibility” to my identity, blended with some self-compassion.

The self-compassion is necessary. Because when I poke at this productive self and try to understand why I am letting her drive the bus, it comes down to a lack of worthiness. Somewhere deep inside me I believe I am loved not for who I am but for what I do—especially what I do for others.

I am not sure where this stubborn and virulent misbelief took root. I wasn’t scolded for not having a straight A report card; my parents praised my academic achievements but didn’t push me to become the valedictorian of the class. Yet somewhere along the line I internalized these high expectations for myself. Perhaps it was being the oldest of three siblings, the sense of being a role model, the good student and the good girl that everyone expected (or so I thought) to continue to be good.

Eventually “good” came to mean “responsible,” and “productive” and “reliable” and “loyal.” All laudable qualities. But as I over-identified with these traits, other aspects of my personality became devalued. The dreamer. The writer of fiction stories. The wanderer without any specific destination. The woman who just might take a nap in the middle of the day for no particular reason except she felt like it.

Now, in my early 60s, I am trying to reconnect with that dreamer and writer who wants to spin stories from her imagination with no other purpose than it pleases her.

That requires self-trust. I need to trust that the world will not fall apart if I take a few items off my to-do list, or go really wild and toss the list out altogether. I need to trust that all will be fine (I won’t die!) if I begin to say '“no” to some work assignments or requests from family and friends. If I refuse to honor my own self-imposed deadlines (I am own worst taskmaster), will I survive?

Because here is the stark way my coach Deb Blum wisely put it: I might be getting things done, but I am actually living? In other words, my life needs to be less Doing and more Being. And that means as we are in the midst of performing our daily tasks to “be” in the doing of it; that is, to be present in that moment, whether it’s making a sandwich or knocking out an 1,000-word article.

My calling is to journey from my head to my heart and to begin to believe that I am loved for who I am and not what I do. That work has begun. As I have written about previously, I am cultivating the art of slowing down and of letting go of what doesn’t serve me any longer.

Slowing life down to savor the moment

Three Ways To Let Go of HyperProductivity

But this is a many-layered journey. So here are a few things I’ve tried recently that helped me and which might help others who find themselves chained to Productivity but yearn for the flow and freedom that comes with knowing that Love is, and always has been, in charge of the show.

1. Feel into your day and let flow be the operative word. Ignore your to-do list. In fact, don’t even make one. If you’re like me, and being productive is part of your DNA—that drive will never not be there—you’ll still get done what’s essential that day. So trust yourself. Wake up without an alarm. Stretch in bed. Check in with yourself. What do I feel like doing in this moment? Hmm…I feel like a healthy green smoothie. Then a walk. And towards the end of that walk, check in again. What’s calling to me? What feels like an invitation rather than an obligation? Choose that thing. The idea is to go through your day feeling your way forward, checking in with yourself several times a day to avoid going on auto-pilot.

2. Make a pie of everything that makes up a piece of you. When I did this, drawing a pie on a piece of paper, and coloring and labeling different slices, Productive Amy was just one small slice. She was outnumbered by the one who is a good snuggler and hugger. The one who smiles and laughs. The one who is kind and thoughtful. The one who is generous. The one who loves with an open heart. The one who is curious and questioning. The one who has two beautiful and amazing daughters. The traveler. The one who is an insatiable learner. The for whom words are her favorite kind of play. The one who makes her mother smile every time she enters her room.

3. Write down your most important values. And then ask yourself, are you living in alignment to those values? This is an exercise I have done a few times over the past few years—in 2020 as part of an online course, in 2022 at a yoga retreat in Hawaii, and now, next month, returning to that Hawaii retreat, I will be looking at those values again. It’s important to revisit our values. They can change because we change. And when we’re not living true to our values, we can end up chasing the wrong things—like the insatiable hunger of super-sized Productivity.

Love Tells Me About Approval

Last week’s prompt in

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

was about seeking approval. I know that my allegiance to productivity has everything to do with approval, so this was serendipitious. When I asked Love what it wants me to know about approval, this was the answer:

Darling girl, my seeker and yearner, so often looking outward rather than inwards, let me tell you a truth, one that you like to keep secret from yourself. You don't need anyone's approval. You simply don't. You only need to approve of yourself. Can you see the sweet simplicity of that realization? Can you let it wash over you, settle into your pores, become the truth in you? It is the truth you have always carried inside you. I see little Amy, our sweet sweet girl. Such a good girl. Longing to be accepted. To be approved. To be loved. Our little striver. And because she worked so very hard at it, she was approved. Every nod of approval from a parent, a teacher, a friend, a partner was like a drop of water in a desert of her neediness. She was terribly thirsty for the approval of others because she could not give it to herself. She could not drink from her own cup. Now, at 63, you are older and wiser. You are loosening the shackles of approval and can you feel in your body how freeing that has been for you? As you go through your day, let this be the thought that keeps floating back toward you, catch it and hold it: All you need to be loved is love.

And so I am letting my word of the year, ABUNDANCE, share the spotlight with SPACIOUSNESS. I already feel my heart expanding.

RESOURCES

Here are a few more resources for slowing down and letting go of overwhelm and hyperproductivity.

Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening, whose February 26 reading is divinely timed as he writes about taking too much on, doing too many things, moving too fast, overcommiting, overplanning. “We run our lives like trains, speeding along…I must somehow find a way to slow down the train that is me until what I pass is again seeable, touchable, feel-able.” He leaves us with three instructions: 1. Consider three things you must do today. 2. Carefully put two down. 3. Immerse yourself in the one thing that is left.

The “Holding Center” meditation from

Sarah Blondin

whose Substack is a generous heart-centered place. “It’s time to remember now the calm within the chaos, the choice within the dream.”

Less and Less of More and More

,

Sarah Fay, writer

‘s newly launched Substack. As she writes, “Less and Less of More and More is for those who want (or want to want) a little less in a culture of more and more.” Sarah said her recovery from twenty-five years of mental illness "had a lot to do with simplifying my life, having less and less of more! more!” I will be joining her exploration of our culture of too much and why it’s maybe, as she suggests, totally unnecessary.

Emma Gannon is the author of The Success Myth: Letting Go of Having It All and writes The Hyphen by Emma Gannon about creativity, books, wellbeing, ambition and rest, Internet culture and the future of work. The book is both personal, describing how her biggest achievements left her feeling the most empty but also about “the collective sea-change post-pandemic, our changing appetite for success and the realisation that the idea that we will one day 'arrive' is actually a big lie.”

Paid subscribers: find my voice-over version of this newsletter here.

Question for the comments: Do you over-identify with productivity and if so, what ways have you found to lessen its grip on you?

Three Songs for 3-D

Divorce

“Give Me One Reason,” Tracy Chapman

I said this youthful heart can love you/Oh and give you what you need
But I'm too old to go chasin' you around
Wastin' my precious energy

Dementia

“You Can Close Your Eyes,” James Taylor

Oh, the sun is surely sinking down
But the moon is slowly rising
So this old world must still be spinning round
And I still love you

Destiny

“Vienna,” Billy Joel

Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart tell me
Why are you still so afraid?