Examining Productivity in Exhausting Times

In recent years, conversations about burnout, exhaustion, and mental health have moved increasingly into public view. Across industries and communities, people are naming a shared reality: many are overwhelmed, depleted, and struggling to sustain the pace and pressures of daily life. But this exhaustion is not occurring in a vacuum. People are navigating rising economic instability, political hostility, social fragmentation, climate anxiety, unattainable costs of living, and ongoing uncertainty about the future. At the same time, we continue to exist in a society that labels itself “post-pandemic,” despite the reality that many people’s nervous systems, bodies, relationships, and senses of safety have not fully recovered from the trauma and disruption of the last several years.

Systems that demand constant productivity while offering little flexibility, support, or collective care ultimately harm everyone. At some point, we will all experience grief, illness, caregiving responsibilities, burnout, aging, injury, mental health struggles, recovery, or periods of reduced capacity. Yet most workplaces, institutions, and social systems are not designed to make space for these realities unless someone can “prove” enough hardship to deserve accommodation. Disabled people often encounter these barriers first and most intensely, but increasingly, many non-disabled people are colliding with the same rigid systems that leave little room for being fully human. The exhaustion many are experiencing is not separate from disability; it reveals how fragile and exclusionary these systems have always been.

For many marginalized communities, this exhaustion is even more layered. There is a distinct physical and psychological toll that comes from moving through systems that repeatedly communicate that your body, identity, needs, or existence are burdensome, disposable, unsafe, or unwelcome. Disabled people, Black and Brown communities, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and others navigating systemic oppression often carry the additional labor of hypervigilance, masking, code-switching, self-advocacy, and navigating inaccessible or hostile environments simply to participate in everyday life. The impacts of this chronic stress are cumulative.

Yet despite this reality, dominant culture continues to frame exhaustion as a personal failure rather than a systemic issue. We are encouraged to optimize our schedules, become more resilient, improve our coping strategies, and return to productivity as quickly as possible. Rarely do we ask a more fundamental question: what if people are not failing systems, but systems are failing people?

Research continues to show the profound impacts of chronic stress, social isolation, economic precarity, and overwork on physical and mental health. Burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon linked to chronic workplace stress. Studies across healthcare, education, nonprofit work, caregiving, and service industries demonstrate rising rates of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and disengagement. Research on trauma and chronic stress also increasingly shows how prolonged exposure to instability, discrimination, and lack of safety can dysregulate the nervous system and contribute to long-term health impacts.

Rethinking productivity requires more than simply changing our mindset; it asks us to practice living differently within systems that constantly push people beyond sustainable limits. Disability justice reminds us that the issue is not only that accommodations are difficult for Disabled people to access, but that flexibility, rest, and care have been gatekept altogether. Many systems operate as though people should be endlessly available, emotionally unaffected, physically consistent, and able to move through life without interruption. But that is not the reality of being human.

There are tangible ways we can begin challenging productivity-centered norms in our daily lives and communities:

1. Notice where urgency is manufactured. Not every task, email, deadline, or expectation is truly immediate. Learning to question urgency culture can help reduce chronic stress and create more intentional, sustainable ways of engaging with work and community.

2. Treat rest as necessary. Rest is not a reward for exhaustion. Bodies and minds require recovery, care, and pause in order to sustain wellbeing over time. Block off time. Say no sometimes.

3. Build flexibility into expectations for yourself and others. Human capacity fluctuates. Creating room for changing energy levels, access needs, caregiving responsibilities, and unexpected challenges helps make participation more sustainable for everyone.

4. Practice interdependence instead of hyper-independence. Ask for help, share resources, collaborate, and normalize mutual support. Independence is often treated as the ideal, but humans have always survived through collective care and connection.

These practices may seem small, but they challenge deeply embedded ideas about worth, labor, and belonging. In a culture that conditions people to push beyond their limits, choosing care, flexibility, and interdependence becomes both a personal and collective act of resistance.