Setting Minimum Daily Requirements to Relieve Productivity Stress

I was raised in a home and school environment that delivered the message that every waking hour should be productive. No, that’s not a healthy message, but it’s the message I received and sadly it became ingrained in how I think.

Fast forward to today and even at age 65 that message still resonates constantly all day long, every day of my life. I consistently struggle with nagging feelings that I’m not doing enough. When I do more, it still feels like it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

That’s not good. I know that intellectually. Viscerally it’s not so easy to shake my programming. So, over the years I’ve tried different strategies to blunt the impact of productivity stress.

As I’ve talked to friends, many report these same feelings of being stressed over not accomplishing enough, and often they can’t articulate what enough means.

Research has shown that some stress is beneficial to productivity. Too little stress in our lives can turn us into couch potatoes and chronic underachievers and underearners. That’s not good either.

There is something known as “The Yerkes-Dodson law” that suggests performance increases with some physiological or mental stress but only up to a point. When the level of stress becomes too high, performance…