Productivity: The New Drug

What are you doing?  

If you ain’t up, 5am, run, gym, look at stocks, read 5 self-help books all before work?  

Are you even trying?  

We have made burnout an aesthetic and trended exhaustion as ambition. Productivity has gone from a healthy habit to a toxic obsession. In 2025, productivity addiction is the most socially accepted mental illness of our time. Society’s pressure to be always grinding is fuelling anxiety, destroying health, and stealing rest.

It started in the 2000s with Silicon Valleys ‘tech bro’ hustle according to the The Atlantic which also produced phrases like “sleep when you’re dead” and all-nighters as badges of honour. By the 2010s, influencers brought the same grind online, and by 2020, it was polished into an aesthetic “self-improvement” lifestyle. Trends like “That Girl“, “Monk Mode” and “My 5–9 Before My 9–5” saturate your feed. It’s the same grind, just different lighting and hashtags.

We know social media is mostly full of carefully curated, happy and aesthetic moments. But we still believe the grind is 24/7. That’s the danger.  

Endless clips of #5to9before9to5, millions trying to live like Pinterest boards before breakfast.

Wake Up!!

It’s fake, and it’s causing toxic comparison, identity loss, weakened immunity, isolation, constant guilt, and anxiety over free time.

Is it consistency, or is it addiction?

Somehow, if your social feeder is not full of how-to videos on exercise, diet, work, trauma repair, and you’re not implementing them, then you’re considered “surviving life and not living life.” 

But is that really true? If you’re constantly grinding and focusing on bettering and tweaking yourself to be the ultimate human being, isn’t that just surviving as well, by numbing yourself to life and time? 

Have you noticed? 

How the white clouds look stagnant, but are actually flying across the sky. 

How branches twist like veins.

Have you actually stopped for a minute—no music, no stats, no news, nothing cluttering your mind, just to be aware of the world around you?

We are humans with emotions and limitations. We were given the night for a reason. Productivity addiction is a sickness, but labelled with a pretty name. We need to actually start living like humans, not as robots.

Rest isn’t laziness, it’s rebellion.