Are You Feeling Guilty About Unproductive Days?

Photo by Kevin Woblick on Unsplash

TL/DR:

• Unproductive days are completely normal and acceptable.

• Acknowledge these days openly to free yourself from guilt.

• Life events naturally disrupt productivity; embrace it.

• Your value is never determined by your productivity.

The Whole Shebang:

It’s OK to have unproductive days.

Yep, you heard that right.

And I’ll repeat it:

It’s ok to have unproductive days.

The world’s on fire and we are all coping the very best that we can.

And you know what?

Even when you’re not in the middle of a crisis, it’s still OK to have unproductive days.

Sometimes these days are planned. (Like how, at the end of the school year each year, we knock off early and take the kids our for celebratory last day of school ice cream.)

Sometimes you just wake up knowing that you’re not feeling it.

Or maybe you don’t know it when you get out of bed, but you sure know it when, an hour into the day, you’re having trouble focusing and can’t quite find the motivation to get working.

On those days (which, I’ll admit, for me, are rare, but they do occasionally happen), I tend to just name it.

I’ll say out loud, “Well, today is just not going to be a productive day.”

And once I’ve named it, it sets me free.

I’m able to let go of any negative feeling around the proclamation, lean into it and know that tomorrow, I’ll be back to being my productive self.

Because I’ve given myself this gift today, the gift of not being productive and being totally OK about it.

It’s OK to be less productive than you had hoped

A friend texted me the other day and said “In light of all the news today, I just can’t seem to focus on work”.

And you know what? Same.

I’ve had a lot of days over the last few months where instead of being able to focus on the work I had to do, I was focusing on the state of the country and the world.

And that’s OK. Because it’s real. It’s happening. And it can be difficult to put it aside and get to work.

It’s OK for your plans not to work out

It’s been a rough season for me. And maybe for you, too.

2024 was spent with the specter of my dad’s upcoming death from brain cancer. We knew it was coming. But we didn’t know when.

I visited more often then usual, but I was still trying to get keep on keeping on, keep the wheels on the bus of my business, shepherd one of my kids through the nightmarish high school application process in San Francisco (seriously, it’s hellish and, as the high school counselor said “not age appropriate”. Did she mean for my kid, or for me??).

And then, all of a sudden, my dad had took a turn for the worse, was hospitalized, entered home hospice and then died. I think I was on something like 12 flights in a 6 week period.

And let’s just say that everything I’d planned to do to prepare for the end of the year, and start the new one, went out the window.

I pushed back all my work, goals and deadlines by a couple of months.

My plans didn’t work out, because life happened.

And that’s OK.

And this is all during the backdrop of post-inauguration 2025.

So, even if your dad didn’t die (and I hope he didn’t!), I’m pretty sure that the tumultuous nature of this year has meant that some of your plans didn’t quite work out either.

And that’s OK.

Give yourself some grace.

It’s OK to have unproductive days.

You are not your productivity.

Your worth is not dependent on your output.

I promise.