I’ve realized that I frequently feel guilty when I do nothing or even when I take a break. When I take a break, I experience a sense of guilt or discomfort that I don’t think I should 😢.
One day, I was so exhausted that the only thing I wanted to do was to watch anime. Because I was so focused on understanding the plot of the series, I didn’t feel anything during that time. However, once it was over, I began to feel it ... OMG!! I should have written a program or studied something instead of watching that. DAMN IT!!
I constantly feel guilty whenever I scroll through social media for hours, especially on the weekends. I picture myself being unable to complete the tasks I set out to complete. Even though I take a break, I still feel as though I am aimlessly passing the time. I feel sooo HAPPY when I start working and do many of my tasks; I feel like I have accomplished much today. So why do I feel bad when I’m actually working hard?
What is this?🤷♂️
After researching this subject, I discovered that it is truly a type of anxiety called “Time Anxiety.” In general, you can also call it “Productivity Guilt.”
Well, there are three different types of time anxiety:
- Existential Time Anxiety is the belief of feeling that you are living your life in a finite period of time
- Future Time Anxiety is when you are concerned with how your activities in the present may affect your future
- Daily Time Anxiety is when you believe that there are never enough hours in a day to complete all of your tasks
When you experience time anxiety, your body’s fight or flight response is mistakenly triggered even when you are not in danger, much like it is when you experience other types of fear.
The good news is that I now have a better understanding of myself, and I’m trying to stop being so hard on myself.
The following actions are what I think you should take to comfort yourself.
- Plan your day one day in advance
- Rephrase what productive means for you
- Adjust your mindset
- It’s okay to be lazy sometimes
- To be productive, you don’t always need to be seated at your desk
Have you ever felt the same? How do you deal with it?
