I know we’re all feeling a bit anxious as we head into next week. If I’m not doing something, I’m feeling fidgety. I simultaneously feel like I’m doing a lot but getting nothing done. Anyone else? And how can we be better about channeling our anxiety into productivity? Is that even a healthy pursuit?

My friend Morra Aarons-Mele talks about this all the time. She points out that ambition-fueled anxiety can actually benefit leaders and other high performing individuals: “It fuels their drive, hard work, and achievement.”​

When we think of productivity and ambition, we mostly visualize business or career performance. But our definition of productivity needs to expand.

P.S. If you’re new here, I’m Amy, a corporate speaker, marketing consultant, journalist and USA TODAY bestselling author of The Setback Cycle. (Want to hire me to speak at your organization? Shoot me a note here.)

Last Tuesday, I asked a client to reschedule a meeting so I could pick up my daughter from school that day. Luckily, they were able to do so, and so I was able to enjoy walking with her friends to the park where I delightfully watched as they all jumped through piles of leaves.

After all the leaf leaping, I dropped her off at gymnastics, then ran home to cook dinner. I usually cook on Tuesdays because that 1.5 hour gymnastics class is the perfect amount of time to run home and cook (shoutout to Caro Chambers) enough to repurpose that meal into leftovers for the next several days. As soon as I was done cooking, I ran back to gymnastics to pick her up, we walked home together and arrived around the same time my husband got home from work.

After dinner, I handed her off to my husband to do bedtime as I ran out the door again, this time scurrying down the block to attend a community park board meeting. I was convinced to run for a board position this year and was scheduled to announce my candidacy. I’m trying to unseat the incumbent, it’s clearly the most critical election happening this season!

When I got home and collapsed into bed later that night, I felt a familiar sense of satisfaction. It reminded me of the days when I would challenge myself to accomplish an unrealistic amount of projects within any given weekday, especially in the days where I was working full time and squeezing in consulting, freelance writing and writing a book on the side.

I know we are all trying to achieve balance, and do less, but can I be honest? I love the scurrying. I love packing in a lot of stuff in one day. I feel super accomplished and fulfilled on days when I feel like I get a lot done. And that “get a lot done” satisfaction doesn’t always come from projects that are income-generating. It can also come from the ambition put towards family, home and community projects.

Perhaps I fall into the “productivity trap,” which Four Thousand Weeks author Oliver Burkeman **describes as, “a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time, it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally ‘out of the way.’”

I just ran you through an example of a day that actually went well. But of course, this delicate balance of schedule juggling is hanging on by a thread. I almost always fail in one area or another. A project, a household task (usually several of those) a school-related activity does not get my full attention and so I fail at it. And when I inevitably fail, I fall into a spiral of self-doubt, convincing myself that this failure is not because I’ve taken on too much and fallen into the productivity trap, but because I’m personally bad at everything. I mean I gave a freaking TEDx talk on self doubt and I still succumb to it far too often.

So is there a way to align productivity with purpose and channel your anxiety into a reasonable amount of tasks that avoids sending us free falling into this unhealthy state?

I’ve written extensively about the work of Martin Seligman, known as “the father of positive psychology.” He created something known as the PERMA model. According to PERMA, the five components of living a balanced, fulfilled, and happy life include:

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Positive relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

Can we channel our anxiety and direct our ambition towards these community-centric goals? Maybe if we did, that “high” associated with productivity might lead to healthier outcomes. There are a lot of studies on how to apply this model to collaboration within the workplace but I really think we can also apply them to the other areas of our lives.

And yes, maybe striving for PERMA is also a way to refocus our anxiety towards productivity. But so what if we’re rewarded by high performance, or by “packing a lot in?” As long as we don’t take it to an unhealthy level, let it get too extreme, and of course, acknowledge if we have any sort of disordered anxiety, maybe this is okay? Maybe we just need to be gentler on ourselves, even when we admit that we do find satisfaction from packing a lot into our days.

I mean, as long as we’re feeling anxious (especially right now, with this massive, wildly consequential thing happening next week), why not have something meaningful to direct our anxious energy towards?

Do you know how much art we have because people channeled their ambition into creative pursuits? Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and others all supposedly suffered from extreme anxiety. And look what they created.

Even if you’re not painting some sort of masterpiece, give yourself permission to direct your anxiety or your ambition wherever the hell you want to. Maybe you ran out to canvas this weekend, maybe you phone banked as a way to quell your anxiety (I’m doing this tonight at the moment this newsletter goes out.) Maybe you cooked a new meal. Maybe you did freaking laundry and getting that off your list made you feel some level of satisfaction.

And if you aren’t feeling appreciated or fulfilled after a spring of hyper-productivity, take a cue from my 6-year-old.

A few nights ago, we sat down to a heated game of Monopoly. After taking a decent amount of play money in one turn, my daughter yelled emphatically, “Keep up the good work!”

“Thanks!” I replied, amused by her encouragement.

“Mommy, I was talking to myself.”

Wherever you’re currently directing your anxiety, whether you get a boost of serotonin from checking things off your ever expanding to-do list, or you just want to veg out and binge Netflix tonight, I'm here to tell you that I see you doing your best. And if that’s not enough, just offer yourself a few words of encouragement.

“Keep up the good work.”

In the meantime, here’s what I’m:

I used to live on Elizabeth Street and spent many beautiful afternoons sitting in the Elizabeth Street Garden. Here’s a lovely profile of the man whose father created it and how he’s fighting to save it now.

​The self care routines of older Americans make aging look, dare I say, kind of fun?

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Wondering about your dreams? Or do you fully understand them now? This 95 year old researcher has been studying dreams for years and found some clues as to why women’s dreams tend to change during the various stages of their lives.

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