Toxic Productivity: Working Past The Point of Exhaustion
In February of 2015, at 18 years old, I started a new Tumblr blog; it was a Studyblr. A Studyblr is, quite simply, a Tumblr blog dedicated to studying. As is common with Tumblr, there is a large community of such blogs although it’s almost impossible to know exactly how many.
From my observation, it’s a predominantly female community with users at all stages of their academic careers. Though it’s a generally pleasant and welcoming community, it’s also a bastion of toxic productivity. As with all social media platforms, there is a pressure to put on a perfect front. However, because the goal is academic success, I believe this undue pressure is wholly overlooked.
For almost three and a half years I shared my experience of doing my undergraduate degree in history. I shared my experiences of moving to abroad for a year, of writing my first dissertation, and of getting accepted into my dream university for my master’s degree. I shared pictures of my notes, usually with a coffee in shot too. I reblogged pictures of other people’s notes, as well as endless motivational quotes and aesthetic pictures of book shops. I also reblogged the occasional hints and tips masterpost, although as with most social media platforms these days, my studyblr was mostly picture based.
What I very rarely shared (if ever) was the guilt I felt on the days I did not post. I didn’t share how inadequate I felt when I saw other people posting on their 90th day in a row, almost at the end of the popular 100 Days of Productivity Challenge. I didn’t talk about the time I didn’t sleep for 30 hours because I hadn’t written my 3000-word research paper on Hitler and Mussolini because I was too upset about Trump’s election. (Not my finest moment but ultimately understandable). I didn’t post a picture of my desk a complete mess, covered in crockery and bits of junk because I was too exhausted to tidy it. And, I must admit, more than once I lied about what I had done that day in order to seem more “productive” than I was. I can’t help but think that if I lied, others probably did too.
No online community is perfect, nor indeed is every blog in a community the same. There were blogs that talked about mental health and the need to rest but you really had to dig for these; the primary focus was always on work. Challenges were quite common. As I mentioned before, the 100 Days of Productivity Challenge (sometimes shortened to 30 days) was immensely popular. What stands out about this type of challenge is that “productive” was almost always taken to mean “doing schoolwork.” Very rarely did this “productivity” seem to involve rest or acts of self-care.
Of course, the majority of people do rest at some point every day, but the point is that this rest was very rarely shown or celebrated in the way that studying was. There were also monthly challenges the made the rounds, giving users prompts for posts each day of the month. Not only was there a pressure to be constantly productive, there was a pressure to adhere to the aesthetic standards of the community. Look under the studyblr tag and you will likely see an array of similar pictures; books arranged perfectly, notes colour coded with Mildliners, and the most pristine bullet journals you could ever imagine. This is not, however, most people’s reality when studying.
Some may ask why should people bother to talk about rest or post about times they fell short? After all, studyblrs are intended primarily for motivation, just like fitspo is. “It’s not meant to be realistic,” they might argue, “it’s meant to be aspirational.” There’s nothing wrong with wanting to view motivational content. There’s nothing wrong with building a community centred on encouraging yourself and others to work hard towards your academic goals. The problem lies in the lack of discussion about rest because firstly, because rest is a key part of achieving academically, and secondly, because online bubbles create a sense of false reality. They create a sense of “everyone else can manage, so why can’t I?”
I believe most of the pressure users face comes from a combination of the heavily female composition of the community, and from the public nature of social media in general. Mainstream, media-friendly feminism today often values independence and individual success, and for many young women, school is their route to this. There’s the added issue of the world of academics still being male dominated, especially in STEM, causing a need for women to feel they have to “prove themselves.”
Finally, academic success can give young women a boost of self-confidence, which can become problematic if they are lacking a feeling of self-worth separate from external achievements. I know that, for me, this was the case. From a noticeably young age my sense of self-worth centred around my ability to succeed at school; it became almost my whole identity. Displaying this success to others online gave me even more of the external validation I had come to rely on. Whether this success was ticking off everything on my list for the day or graduating, sharing it online made the success even sweeter. This drive for young women to be seen as almost perfect is a much-discussed aspect of all social media platforms at the moment and the studyblr community is by no means an exception.
This is not to say that every studyblr user has a self-esteem issue, or even that every user feels this pressure to be perfectly productive every day. But news story after news story has alerted us all to the dangers of pressure from online communities to be a certain way. Other tumblr communities have gotten (justifiably) bad press in the past for pushing young girls towards unhealthy behaviours. Just because the focus is here on academics and not one’s looks, doesn’t mean the danger is less. Burn-out is very real and, if certain articles are to be believed, is getting worse amongst young people. Feeling a constant pressure to perform productivity online, combined with the very real pressure of school or university work, opens people up to developing or worsening mental health problems. And when everyone in your bubble seems to be perfect, you’re less likely to reach out for help.
Despite all this, I believe that the stubylr community has the capacity to evolve; there is room for balance amongst all this pressure. People online in general have begun to speak out against burn out culture in recent years, and a quick look at the tag “#studyblrs get real” shows that this criticism is being noticed by those in the community. People are slowly beginning to post about the pitfalls of comparing yourself to others and the dangers of constantly working to the point of exhaustion. One user has a post that is worth quoting:
“I scroll through my dash and think, ‘Wow. I’m so much less dedicated, hardworking, passionate than these people.’… [The] words we type, documenting our day, and the photos we post, perfectly arranged – they show an impossible, unreal version of ourselves.” (Tumblr user Liveandstudy.)
Written by Heather Curry
I’m Heather, I’m currently an administrator working in the elevator business but I’m also working on my application to do a PhD in history. I love cooking, weightlifting, ballet, and true crime podcasts.