Doing It All vs. Doing Enough – TPW408

Being a productive woman does not mean doing all the things all the time. This week we’ll talk about doing it all versus doing enough.

What if doing it all is wearing us down?

One thing I worry about sometimes in hosting a podcast about productivity is whether I’m contributing to something a lot of us as women struggle with, which is the feeling that to be productive women we have to be doing all the things, all the time. Even though we often talk about productivity being more than getting more stuff done, still this urge to fit more and more into our days is an issue that comes up often in discussions with other women and in the materials I read about productivity.

Whether it’s working long hours to build our career or our business, or trying to manage motherhood, relationships, a career, and a side hustle at the same time while also maintaining the body shape and appearance we think we should have, or whatever other opportunities come across our path, sometimes we struggle with feeling like we need to do it all or else feel like we’ve failed. And many of us feel like we’re regularly falling short. 

I wanted to talk about that today, both because it’s something I deal with pretty often and because I know I’m not alone. The question I’ve been pondering is where’s the line between pursuing our endeavors with excellence and taking on the impossible ideal of “doing it all”? When is enough enough?

Doing It All

The mindset

Many of us, no matter how much we’re doing at work, at home, in our relationships, or in the world, feel like we should be doing more.  Often can’t even define it; just this sense that we’re not doing enough, or not doing it right. 

In a Psychology Today article, clinical psychologist Diana Hill, Ph.D., talks about a concept called “toxic productivity.” She asks: “So the question is: When does productivity become toxic? It can look different for each of us, but feeling burned out or having feelings of low-self worth (i.e., people-pleasing or never feeling good enough and not living our truth/acting authentically) are really good indicators that productivity has turned toxic.”

She quotes a poem called “Productivity Anxiety” by Rupi Kaur:

“i have this productivity anxiety

that everyone else is working harder than me

and i’m going to be left behind

cause i’m not working fast enough

long enough

and i’m wasting my time”

Doing it all is an epidemic

In a 2020 Harvard Business Review article, the writer cites a study by psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, noting that:

“The two psychologists studied more than 40,0000 American, British, and Canadian college students between 1989 and 2016 and  found that perfectionism has increased dramatically over the last few decades — 33% since 1989. We seem to be internalizing a contemporary myth that life should be perfec...