If you ever played around with the language app Duolingo, I’m sure you’re familiar with its mascot Duo.
Duo hates me.
For real. I have a widget on my phone where Duo tracks my streak (which breaks if you don’t practice Duolingo every single day), and he is perpetually angry with me. I always break my streak.
pic from the internet, there’s no way I’d ever reach a 2683 day streak).
In fact, Duolingo is so angry with me that I don’t open the app anymore (though mostly out of spite). I don’t like looking that angry bird’s face, and I don’t like to be guilted into doing something.
Yet, that’s often what I do to myself.
I guilt myself into doing stuff all the time.
I tell myself I MUST work.
I MUST be productive.
And I’ll feel terribly guilty if I’m not doing something ‘worthwhile’ with my time.
During my PhD, this translated into a constant pressure to write. I would write like my life
depended on it. It crept into my evenings and weekends; I even wrote while I was in bed sick with COVID. My life was writing.
100% do not recommend.
By the time I handed in my thesis, I crashed pretty hard. I was tired, exhausted. Even had to get therapy for panic attacks, because apparently all that pressure made me forget how to breathe like a normal human.
I know, pretty typical, right? Probably should have seen it coming. Bad mental health is rampant in academia.
Luckily, I don’t put that insane level of pressure on myself anymore, but I still feel guilty for taking a day off – there’s always more stuff to do!
That crazy work mentality is hard to shake.
I think in part our productivity-obsessed society is to blame, and working in academia certainly didn’t help. Do “Write or Die” and “Publish or Perish” sound familiar?
This constant pressure, whether at the forefront or looming at the back of our minds, it’s always there. We must produce. More papers! More science!
It doesn’t help that well-meaning advise states we need a writing habit to be good academic
writers. Yes, it’s true that writing consistently makes you a better writer.
But in a productivity-obsessed world it’s easy to interpret that as “I must write every day, no matter what.”
That level of consistency is hard to keep up. What if you’re sick? What if you need to take care of someone? What if you’re just having an off day? Or what if you just want to do something else? It’s fun to take breaks!
So let’s redefine consistency.
What if consistency doesn’t mean showing up every day.
What if it simply means showing up when you can?
I bet there would be much less chance of burning out.
Why am I telling you all this?
It’s summer time!
I used to use my summer to work extra hard. It’s a great time to write. There’s less meetings, less obligations, just complete focus time. “MUST use this time to write! Must write all summer!” I’d completely forego taking a proper break.
So here’s some hard-earned wisdom for my fellow guilt fueled peeps:
You can produce amazing work without constantly pushing yourself beyond your limits.
In fact, you’ll probably do better if you take some breaks.
Our brain needs rest to be creative and innovative.
Don’t let that productivity guilt fuel you. Fuel yourself with replenishing breaks instead. Rather than writing all summer, go out and enjoy the world (or just do nothing, that’s totally fine too). Trust me, you will write better if you don’t write all day long. Your body can’t run marathons all day every day, and your brain can’t do it either.
So go out and enjoy! Hopefully it’s not raining…