Wake up at 5am. Read a book a week. Exercise every day-but make sure it's high-intensity or it doesn't count. Journal. Meditate. Volunteer. Living well sounds exhausting. Maybe it's just easier to flop down and watch Netflix? <a href="https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2018/12/13/productivity-guilt/">Productivity guilt </a>happens when you feel overwhelmed by all the things you know you "should" be doing. You don't do them, but you still have that nagging feeling like you're wasting time. If you feel that guilt, I'm partly to blame. I write a lot about how to live better, and sometimes all those suggestions can start to feel more like burdens than helpful advice.

Productivity guilt

Is it simply the case that your energy is limited, and if you put in effort in one area of your life, you're necessarily sucking it away from another area? This is a common view, but the research shows it's actually a lot more complicated. Roy Baumeister helped develop the view of <a href="https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2019/09/30/self-control/#02-01">ego depletion </a>, which basically means exactly this idea: exerting willpower is hard, it depends on a finite store, and when that store is depleted you succumb to temptations more easily.

Ego depletion

Except ego depletion hasn't stood up as well as a scientific concept after more rigorous replications. Indeed, there's research that shows that <a href="https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2019/09/30/self-control/#04">the way you think of your own willpower </a>affects its depletion. If you believe that you're "energized" by doing hard things, you tend not to get depleted after exerting willpower. If there really were a physical store of energy, then your beliefs about it shouldn't affect it. Yet they do.

The first kind of fatigue doesn't seem to match up with the energy metaphor much at all. In this case, you think the activity will be exhausting, but when you actually get going, it doesn't feel so bad. The effort is all in the starting, not the doing. This is the kind of feeling you want to push through. If you can overcome that initial hiccup to taking action, everything gets much easier. The second kind of feeling might be something you encourage yourself to do for specific goals, but if your entire life feels that way for weeks at a time, your habits are probably unsustainable.

First, realize that you actually cannot do everything you should. You can't even do everything you want to do. That's okay, that's just the normal constraint of living in a world where time isn't infinite. Therefore, it's totally okay to acknowledge that there's a trade-off between different pursuits. You might want to meditate an hour every day, but recognize that this will cut into your gym habit. Or you might decide that waking up early is going to cut into your social life. I won't decide which you ought to prioritize-that's for you to choose. I'm not even consistent with how I make this choice. At some points in my life, I've prioritized my health and fitness, other times my social life, reading or some other activity. While, in theory, there's enough time for everything, in practice there are almost always trade-offs.

Second, make a distinction between a lack of inertia and persistent exhaustion from an activity being more hassle than help . If you push yourself to the gym, but feel good after you went, that's good. On the other hand, if you constantly feel exhausted by everything, you might be pushing yourself towards burn out.

Wake up at 5am. Read a book a week. Exercise every day-but make sure it's high-intensity or it doesn't count. Journal. Meditate. Volunteer. Living well sounds exhausting. Maybe it's just easier to flop down and watch Netflix? Productivity guilt happens when you feel overwhelmed by all the things you know you "should" be doing.

Too Tired to Do Everything? How to Live Better Without Burning Out

Aruna Kala Krupaa