This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 110, Being Productive Enough.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professionals and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And today I want to talk about productivity or productivity. I’ve heard it pronounced both ways, but being a slovenly American, I tend toward pronouncing it productivity. Even though I am well aware, and I don’t know if this is classist or snobbish or what have you, I feel like productivity sounds smarter. It’s more professional. But yes, are you productive? Midori is here too, hilariously and ironically interrupts my productivity. Though honestly, that kind of worked, so thank you.

I want to talk about productivity today because of an experience that I had last week. And I think that it’s going to be an experience that unfortunately you might relate to as well. I was looking forward to what was going to be a very productive week of writing. Usually I have all sorts of talks and interviews and calls on the schedule, but the upcoming week was beautifully empty. My schedule looks like a vast and barren desert, and I was so excited about it. And I said, perhaps, foolishly, “I am going to get so much writing done,” because, of course, on Monday I woke up with a splitting, pounding headache. And when I tried to get up and walk, it was basically like my arms and legs were made of molten lead.

I was determined to not be sick and to brush it off. And so, I made my coffee and I sat down at my computer and I stared. And after a while I couldn’t handle the pain anymore, and I had to drag myself back to bed, where I laid down in a cloud of anger and resentment, feeling like I had lost something, feeling like I had been defeated.

This illness, which turned out to be a sinus infection, lasted through Tuesday evening. And I sort of cautiously got out of bed on Tuesday evening and I ate some food and I was like, “Oh my gosh, am I feeling better? I think that I’m feeling a little better.” So I prepared myself for a very successful Wednesday. I set out my writing equipment, my podcasting equipment. I got my coffee maker all ready. And I was so jazzed that I was going to have.. The first couple days of my week had not been as productive as I wanted them to be, but I still had Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Of course, something happened on Wednesday with a capital H. And I’m not going to talk about it here, but it killed my entire day. And on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I had had some emails come in requesting interviews and stuff. And so I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to go ahead and schedule those for Thursday morning and get them out of the way.” And so, Thursday morning, I had back to back interviews and phone calls. And by the time evening rolled in, I was 100% completely fried. But I still wanted to do something for my brand, and so I did a live stream. Actually, I had also done a live stream on Wednesday evening, and so that took up my evening there. But I did a live stream on Thursday evening and also knew that I had one on Friday evening.

Friday rolls around. It’s 5:30 AM. I wake up. I shoot out of bed. I am in a panic. My beautiful writing week could still be salvaged. And I just started hammering out words on my laptop. And honestly, Friday was a great day. I got a ton of writing done. But was it enough to salvage my week? Was I productive enough? And in a way, the answer is no, because I am a professional full-time writer and to write one day during a week, that’s simply not enough. That’s not productive enough. But on the other hand, I’ve talked before on this podcast about the difference between a reason for not writing and an excuse for not writing, and I feel that during the week, everything that happened was an actual and legitimate reason not to be productive. And yet, what I was feeling toward myself was anger and resentment at the amount of productivity that I perceived that I had lost.

Now, if you are one of the friends who I text when I feel this way, I apologize. But of course, I took out my phone on that Friday night and I texted a good friend, who is also a writer and creator, and who also has similar expectations for herself when it comes to productivity. And I said something to the effect of, “I am so angry at myself right now. I had this whole week set aside to write, and I was sick and this other thing happened, and then these other things happened, and life 100% completely got in the way. And I don’t know what to do with these feelings of anger. I just feel like I got in my own way. And I gave up and I let myself be defeated when really I should have pushed through the resistance. I should’ve pushed through the pain. I should have forced myself to write when I was sick, even though I technically couldn’t even really sit up straight. I shouldn’t have allowed those things to come onto my calendar.”

And of course she said, “Is that really fair to yourself? Do you actually think you should have forced yourself to write when you were sick?” And I said, “No, but I’m angry, and I don’t know what to do with this anger. I feel like something has been taken away from me and I have no way to get it back back.” And she said, “Sarah, what would you tell me to do? What would you tell me if I was saying things like this?” And sort of relentingly I said, “Well, I would tell you to forgive yourself and remember that life happens. I would tell you to forgive yourself, tell you that tomorrow is another day, that you can start writing again tomorrow,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And basically I ended up regurgitating all of the advice that I give to other people and that I, myself, am very bad at taking.

Basically I had to forgive myself and move forward because, as my friend so beautifully said, yeah, you can live in the past if you want, but is that really where you want to be? And here’s the thing too, even though I write full time and I get paid to write and I make money from my work, there’s part of me that still feels like I am not a real writer. There’s part of me that still feels this need to prove myself. And this is where these two factors come into play, expectations and comparison.

If you’re anything like me, your expectations tend to snowball. Every day that I was not able to write, for one reason or another, I pushed that expectation onto the next day. So on Monday I said, “Oh, okay. I can’t write today. Tomorrow I will write twice as much.” And Tuesday when I was still sick and expecting myself to write twice as much, I pushed that expectation to Wednesday and I said, “Okay, Wednesday, I’m going to have this mother of all writing days and I’m going to write for three days, I’m going to write three days worth of work in one glorious day on Wednesday.” And of course, things went from there. And by Friday, I had the expectation, the heaping expectation of five days worth of writing to get done in one day.

Now on Friday, I did a ton of great writing, perhaps one or one and a half or two days worth of really good writing. Yet because of my expectation, my very unrealistic expectation that I needed to get five days worth of writing done on that one day, I still felt like a failure and I didn’t live up to those ridiculous, unrealistic expectations for myself. I judged myself, even though I did a lot of great work. I judged myself as not productive enough. I was unsatisfied and I was still angry and resentful at myself. And that’s just the expectations that I hold for myself. Fortunately, I don’t have to report to a boss or anyone who would also have external expectations for me. But for many of us, that’s a factor.

In addition to expectation, internal and external expectation, there’s also comparison. And I’ve talked about comparison. It has its own episode. If you go back and listen to episode 88 of the Write Now podcast. It’s called The Dangers of Comparison. I talk about it there at length, and so I won’t talk about it a whole lot here. I just want to say that it’s also a factor when you’re looking at your own productivity, and you’re also looking at other people’s productivity or the productivities that you perceive them as having. And it’s so easy to do this. It’s so easy to compare ourselves. All we have to do is go out to Instagram.

I follow so many writers and creators on Instagram, and I feel like every single one of them is like, “Wow, today I wrote 7,000 words,” and, “Oh, here’s my word count for the day. I wrote 50,000 words today.” And there’s pictures of people furiously concentrating and furiously writing. There’s pictures of open laptops with tons of words and a latte nearby. And these writers that I follow, they seem to be able to churn out those enormous word counts regardless of anything that is going on in life, regardless of the global pandemic that’s going on right now, regardless of depression or anxiety or the 24 hour news cycle. And it’s so hard to remember when we’re looking through other people’s examples of their productivity, what they’re displaying to us. It’s so hard not to compare ourselves, and it’s so hard not to judge ourselves as being less than, or even worthless.

I know intellectually that every single writer and creator on Instagram very carefully chooses and selects the image that they’re sharing. I know intellectually that most of these people take their photographs ahead of time and schedule them out. I know that they do this. I am also aware that if you are taking a break from your writing to take a carefully posed photo of yourself, pretending to be focused and writing that there’s something going on there, right? And they’re not furiously writing and focusing so much as pretending to write and focus for the sake of that photo. And again, nothing wrong with this. I have my own publicity photos where I look like I’m writing, or I look like I’m engaged in a deep and meaningful conversation. It’s just part of the writing and marketing life.

But the problem here comes when we compare our productivity, our personal writing and creating journey, with someone else’s. And it’s really good to keep in mind that you never know fully what someone else is experiencing or going through or struggling with beyond what we perceive about them, beyond what they share on social media.

I want to go back just a little bit and talk about what we’re talking about when we talk about productivity. And I’m curious, how do you define productivity? I tend to think of it as the amount of work that I am able to produce or complete or do within a certain amount of time. It’s like this ratio of time spent and work produced. But what does that actually mean? Does it mean that you’re a really fast writer and you can churn out words very quickly? Does it mean that you’re really efficient at managing your time? Do you measure productivity in quantity or quality? And here’s an even bigger question, why do we care about productivity?

In a sense, it all comes down to money. If you are, say, a factory that produces cars, if you are able to produce more cars during a certain amount of time, then you have more cars to sell and more money to make, so you care about your workers’ productivity. There’s also this desire to fulfill our dreams. I haven’t really talked a whole lot about ambition on the Write Now Podcast before, but suffice to say, I am a very ambitious person. And I also know that ambition is considered a… Well, let’s just say it, a dangerous or negative trait. I know that JK Rowling has been saying some very not great things lately, but I remember years ago, taking the Harry Potter, Hogwarts Sorting Hat test, where it sorts you into your house. And inevitably, every single time I get sorted into Slytherin, you know, the evil house, because the people in that house have lots of ambition.

Now, I feel like ambition gets a bad rap because there’s this sort of assumption that if you’re ambitious, you will do anything moral or immoral to get what you want. That if you’re ambitious, you are willing to step on other people to get ahead. This is not true for me. I really want to tell you that while I am very ambitious, I don’t go about fulfilling my ambitions in an immoral way. For me, that ambition translates into wanting to do a lot of cool, creative stuff before I die. In that sense, my productivity matters, whether I am able to write one audio drama in my lifetime or two audio dramas and six novels or 713 works total. I don’t actually have an upper limit that I’m looking to fulfill, but we’re under this perception and we’re driven to believe that more is better. I have a lot of things that I want to do with my life, and I do not have time for sickness to get in my way.

For these reasons, and probably for so many other reasons, productivity has become a value in our culture. And when I say in our culture, I am, of course, showing my own bias. I live in the United States, and so that’s where this mindset is coming from. But there are productivity blogs and podcasts and seminars and webinars and self-help books and all sorts of media, all driving us to be more productive. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. I want to produce some really cool works. I want to write more books. I want to make more podcasts. I want to be productive.

But I thought about this while I was sick. And I sort of entertained myself. And entertained maybe isn’t the right word because it wasn’t fun. But I occupied myself by thinking about, what if I never produced anything ever again? What if I just cut my productivity? And then, of course, the questions arose, would I still feel fulfilled? Would I still be allowed to call myself a writer? Would I still have worth? And this is where things get really uncomfortable for us as writers and creators because I think that for a lot of us, our productivity is tied to our self worth. So when we talk about our productivity as writers, are we really talking about what we are worth, what we feel like we are worth to ourselves, to society, to our readers and listeners? When we say productivity, are we really talking about how we value ourselves?

Have you ever felt like your worth as a human being is tied intricately and intimately to what you are able to produce? Because I do. And because I am a very naturally slow creator, it takes me forever to write. I am a very slow writer for whatever reason. I’ve had to come to terms with that in the past year, and that’s just how it works for me. Does that mean I am worth less as a writer? I’m not able to write 7,000 words a day. I’m not even able to write 2000 words a day, and that makes me feel awful. It makes me feel like I’m not good enough. It makes me feel like I’m not productive enough. It makes me feel like I need to improve my productivity.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the days where I have a negative word count. This happened to me the other day I was writing and I was tracking my word counts, and I had to tighten up a speech that somebody was giving. And doing that gave me my entire word count for the day, even though I moved forward with my project, I had a negative 263 word count for the day. But I still moved forward with my project. The project was better. It was tighter. It was more compelling. So what does it actually mean for us to be productive? And what does it actually mean for us to be productive enough? Where does that enough come from? Does that come from expectations, internal or external? Does enough come from comparison, letting someone else set the bar for us? Does it come from this little cranky internal judge who sits in our brains and just constantly tells us that we’re not good enough or we’re not fast enough or we’re not producing enough? Is measuring our productivity by word count even a good idea? Is measuring our productivity at all a good idea?

I know that a lot of this, at least for me, comes from the fear that if I’m not being productive, then I’m not going to create anything ever again and, again, therefore, I will be worthless. I will be nothing. I will have a wasted life. And so, we buy all these productivity books and productivity seminars, and we learn how to write faster and spend more time doing things that matter with great intention. But what is that actually doing for us? What is your identity? What is your idea of self-worth based on?

That’s not a question that I can answer for you and it’s going to be different for everyone. But what I can tell you is that deciding to rest, deciding to take the time to heal, deciding to take the time to care for a loved one, to take care of your children, to take time away from your writing, to do something that is good and meaningful, it doesn’t mean that you are bad. It doesn’t mean that you are not a writer. It doesn’t mean that you are not enough. It simply means that you are human. And it means that I’m human.

Honestly, I think the most that we can do is the best we can with what we have with where we are. We’re all just trying to do our best, and I think that our best needs to be enough. Are you doing the best you can with what you have and where you are right now? None of us lives in a vacuum. Or if you do, I want to ask how you’re doing it because I’ve heard that we need oxygen to breathe, but none of us are free from family obligations and the daily occurrences of life.

I had to go to the doctor yesterday and on my way home, I witnessed a car collision. I was sitting at a red light waiting to turn left, and there was just a huge collision in front of me as one person slammed on their brakes and the person behind them slammed into them. The front of their car crumpled up like a tissue. The back of the bumper of the other car crumpled in, fell off. Both of the drivers got out. And I was just thinking, there goes their entire day. Thankfully neither of them was hurt, which is why I was able to sort of turn it into a thought exercise while I was waiting at that light. But there’s so much in our lives that we don’t have any control over. And I know that’s frustrating for a lot of people.

And it’s frustrating for me because I’m a little bit of a control freak, and heck there are days I don’t want to be sick, I don’t want to have to deal with the aftermath of an auto collision. I don’t want to be in a global pandemic right now. I don’t want to have to go to the doctor. I want to be productive, but, and this might come as a surprise for absolutely none of you, but we don’t always get absolutely everything that we want. And we have to learn to give ourselves grace. And we have to learn to forgive ourselves and forgive other people, even when they get in the way of our ambitious plans, even when they get in the way of our productivity.

Here’s the final message that I want to hammer home in today’s podcast episode, our worth as human beings is not based on what or how much we produce. I want to say that again, and I’m saying it not just for you, but for myself because I have to remind myself of this constantly. Our worth as human beings is not based on what or how much we produce. We get sick. We have to take care of other people. Political events happen worldwide. Pandemics happen. Sometimes it was we’ll have days or weeks or months, or even years, where the circumstances of life are going to overrun our best intentions to write, create and be productive. And that is okay. That’s what it means to live and be human and experience life.

What matters is that when the next opportunity comes along for us to create is that we create, and we forgive ourselves if we can’t. “Productive enough” is simply a matter of doing the best we can with what we have, with where we are in that moment. Enough is subjective. It’s not objective. And I think sometimes when we set up enough to be an objective number or an objective goal, we set ourselves up to be hurt, to be angry, resentful, bitter. We can’t control other people’s lives. We certainly can’t control every aspect of our own lives. All we can do is the best that we can do with the time that we’re given, wherever it is that we are.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts about productivity and self-worth and what it means for you to be “productive enough”, if that’s even something that you worry about. I invite you to go over to the show notes for today’s episode. This is episode number 110, that’s 110, and it’s called Being Productive Enough. You can find those show notes over on sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. And you can just navigate over to that episode, scroll down to the bottom of the page. And there, you should see a comment section where you can submit your comment. Let me know your thoughts.

I’m not able to respond to every email that I receive, but I do respond personally to each and every comment that comes through on my website. So if you would like to engage in a conversation there with me or with other people who are commenting on this post, I would love to see that. I would love for that to happen. And I would love to not only hear your thoughts, but respond to them. So again, that’s sarahwerner.com and move over to the show notes for this episode, episode number 110.

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And so, I want to give special thanks today to Patreons Amanda Dixon, Laurie Leslie Madsen, Regina Calla Breeze, Sean Locke, Tiffany Joiner, Leslie Duncan, and Sara Loughson. Thank you all so, so much for your thoughtfulness and your generosity. I truly appreciate it. And with that, this has been episode 110 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professionals and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner and I want you to remember that you are enough.