How to Re-Define Your Relationship to Productivity

As I sit here writing this newsletter, sipping hot tea, staring out into nature and getting excited for an upcoming audition, I can't help but reflect on how different this phase of my life and my creative entrepreneurship journey looks and feels.

When I was growing up I used to visit my grandparents for a couple of weeks every summer in Mississippi.

As soon as I would get there and had taken off my airport clothes (my grandmother was not about to have her clean house be musty), my grandmother would tell me "You listen here. When you at Mother’s house, you don’t need to do anything. You just need to relax. They got you runnin’ around busy all the time over there in California but when you’re here, you don’t do any of that."

It would always take me a few days to decompress and adjust from my non-stop life in Los Angeles to the molasses-like pace of Jackson, Mississippi because my nervous system simply was not used to that type of living.

A huge reason I loved my grandmother’s home was because it was one of the few places and moments in time where there was no pressure to be productive…….I had permission to relax, do my own thing and be in my own energy……..which was a rarity.

After she died, it took me a long time to realize that a huge part of my pain was because I felt like I had lost that permission.

The reality is, because we exist within a capitalist / ableist society most of us have a deeply unhealthy relationship to productivity.

We’ve confused our worth with how productive we can be, how many tasks we can check off the list and what we can show the world (and ourselves) we’ve accomplished.

But where does that usually leave us?

I would say exhausted at best and traumatized at worst.

For me personally, for most of my life up until the last couple of years, chasing productivity left me depleted, unfulfilled, confused and living really far outside of my energetic zone of genius.

I thought that leaving my corporate job to creative entrepreneurship was going to fix that but nope…….turns out everywhere you go, there you are 🫠 🙃.

Changing this has meant I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that the models of "productivity" and "consistency" that have been force fed to me (all of us) don’t work for me, distract me from the transformative vision I have for myself and the world and are fundamentally harmful.

My grandmother gave me the blueprint of what it meant to come home to myself but at the end of the day, it’s up to me to grant myself that same permission.

It’s up to all of us to do that for ourselves.

To honor myself, my various identities, my energy and the visions I have, I’ve had to come up with new frameworks and worked to align my life to match it.

A few weeks ago I talked about what it means to live in energetic integrity and as someone who identifies as neurodivergent, Highly Sensitive and a Projector in Human Design, energetic integrity is my North Star.

This simple framework reminds me that productivity isn’t about striving for something outside of me and is instead an opportunity to harmonize my energetic capacity, my goals and my values.

Our goals should follow our energetic capacity and our values, not the other way around.

When we do this, we create more ease in our life; we create more flow, more authenticity and more clarity. It doesn't mean that life is perfect and without challenges and chaos but it does mean that we are living in much more alignment.

For me that looks like acknowledging:

• Being neurodivergent: I don’t think in ‘linear’ ways, I have to take my time in processing information. I need to create enough space and time to allow myself to process at my own speed and in my own way.

• Being Highly Sensitive: my nervous system is wired differently and I pick up on more stimulus which means while I am highly creative, I can also get easily overstimulated and overwhelmed. I need to create work situations that are regulating to my nervous system and make sure that I have a schedule that supports a lot of moments of rest.

• Being a 6/2 Projector in Human Design: I don’t have a consistent source of energy so while I can get a lot done in a short amount of time, I also need a lot of time to decompress.

As someone who is also highly driven (3 planets in Capricorn), it also means that I’ve had to re-learn what it means to be productive in ways that are actually supportive to me.

It’s not that I am anti-to do list, but to insure my productivity aligns with both my values and my energetic capacity, at the top of that list are the following reminders:

Did I connect with someone I love?
Did I spend time connecting to nature (even just looking at a a tree)?
Did I move my body?
Did I take one (small) step towards a goal?
Did I do one pleasurable thing?
Did I drink my water?
Did I eat nourishing foods?
Did I rest (even if just for 10 mins)?

Do I embody this perfectly every day? No, of course not; But as I shut down my designated work for the day, take a moment to breathe and notice my body and head out the door to follow my dreams, I know that it's possible.

What are some of the ways you can start shifting your relationship to productivity? What needs to be acknowledged? What can you begin to shift today?

With ease,
Bianca

p.s - Learning your own unique energetic blueprint and re-aligning your time and schedules to match it is part of what we cover in Corporate to Creative Cohort. You can find out more information here, we start June 24th. Pricing tiers available.