“Okay, but I still need to get $h!t done”
Over the past two months, I’ve been making the case that productivity culture is a system worth questioning. That human worth is not measured in output, and that there’s nothing inherently virtuous about overworking, effort-maxing, and burning out.
Okay, great.
But also…the laundry still needs folding. The taxes need filing. The emails need answering.
Getting stuff done is part of life. This is an email for those who want support in the productivity department, but are interested in an anti-perfectionistic approach.
Productivity culture teaches us to motivate ourselves through panic, urgency, guilt, shame, and self-punishment. And these can be highly motivating. Many of us have spent so long using anxiety as fuel that the thought of working without it feels disorienting—like quitting a job with a toxic boss. This boss has spent so many years comparing you unfavorably and pushing your boundaries, withholding rewards and yelling that you need discipline. You can’t help but start to believe it.
In a healthy workplace, we know what actually works over time: teamwork, balance, encouragement, accountability, passion & values. How many of these can apply to our inner boss?
Roping in somebody else as a productivity partner without them even noticing.
Photo by A125.Studio via Pexels.com
Borrow somebody else’s productivity.
Body doubling is one of the most beloved productivity tools in the ADHD community, but it’s useful for just about everybody. The idea is simple: do your work in the presence of another person. That might mean meeting a friend for a silent work session. Calling someone while you fold laundry. Bringing your laptop to a library or coffee shop. You can even search for “body doubling” on YouTube and find hours of people just working at their desks to keep you company.
Maybe you don’t need more discipline; maybe you need a buddy.
Follow your energy instead of shaming it.
Productivity culture treats the human body like an inconvenient obstacle. What if we treated our bodies as wise?
Instead of asking, “What should I be working on?” we could ask, “What kind of energy do I actually have right now?”
Maybe this moment has:
phone call energy
organization momentum
mindless repetitive task mood
creative spark
strategic ambition
If the answer is something like avoidance energy or take a nap energy, that’s good information, too. Some part of you is asking for rest or nourishment that you’ve probably been withholding for a long time.
Maybe you don’t need to do a bit of work on the weekends; maybe you need equilibrium.
Give your tasks a container.
I dedicated a whole newsletter to the idea that work expands to fill its container. However much time or energy you imagine is available to a task is how much time and energy that task is likely to take. At a minimum. To quote myself: “If you give a task a day, it’ll take a day. If you give your to-do list your soul, it’ll take that too.” So what if we gave all of our tasks a clear, manageable container?
The most straightforward way to give work a container is to define the amount of time you’ll give it today. So instead of writing “Do taxes” on your to-do list, try saying, “I’m giving taxes 45 minutes only.”
Maybe they’ll get finished and maybe they won’t, but either way, you’ve decided how much of your life this task gets to occupy today. What a different relationship than allowing it to haunt you for three weeks.
What if you don’t need to marinate in stress; what if you’re accountable for having a little fun, too?
None of these strategies are magic, and a lot of tasks are still annoying. But maybe we can ditch the toxic bosses of shame, anxiety, and urgency, and give ourselves a healthier work environment.
Next week, we’ll wrap up the Deprogramming from the Cult of Productivity series with one final discussion on living in peaceful parallel with our to-do lists.
© 2026 Summer Hopkins Myers | Already Good
This work is original and protected. Sharing links is welcome; unattributed reproduction and LLM training are not.
