As a therapist who has continued to practice remotely during the pandemic, I’ve had front-row access to some of the more common mental health challenges it has caused. To be sure, my practice is small and by no means representative, but I’ve been surprised by how many clients are anxious to use this time as productively as possible. For some reason, they seem to share (along with myself) the idea that productively is the best way to spend this unique period, and also of what that generally entails.
The pressure that results falls under the category of existential angst (EA), which asks one question and one question only — what should we do with our time? The angst is over what to do, you see, made existential by the fact that we cannot do everything. The pandemic lockdown is but mis-en-abyme, a smaller and clearer copy of the basic human dilemma. No wonder it is causing, for some, a spike in EA.
And yet this is not true for everyone. In fact, some people have been freed by lockdown. I can share a few things here that will by no means exhaust the possibilities for what explains the difference. First, clients who in their pre-pandemic life were suffering steadily from EA, were usually not engaged enough in what they considered worthwhile, or were overly engaged in what they considered not worthwhile. Forced changes in work and social life have perhaps allowed them to reallocate their time. Secondly, while some people enjoy working on things socially and publicly, others are content on their own. I am thinking here of the difference between two clients, one who is anxious to get into politics to begin “saving the country,” and another who enjoys tending his succulents. The first is impatient for things to return to normal, while the second could work from home forever.
Also of crucial importance is that nobody else is doing anything, either. If, at bottom, EA is a choice between alternatives, then reducing the appeal of alternatives makes choice easier. To a certain calming extent, anything is fine in the absence of comparison because it cannot be better or worse than anything else. It’s not that staying at home and watching Netflix has gotten any better intrinsically, it’s just that we feel less guilt, less FOMO, when we do it — which makes it more enjoyable.
In fact, I would guess that most of the EA experienced during this time — if not for a more obvious reason, like losing your job — is a result of focusing on what will happen after lockdown, at which point one might wish they had been more productive and less indulgent.
In either case, this brings the issue of productivity front and center. Why is it that my clients want to use their time productively and not lavishly, foolishly, gleefully, generously, randomly or anything else? Does it have to do with this sense that if we don’t, it will be the grossest waste? — or is that merely the other side of the coin? I’m not sure, but I note its consistency across my clientele, and feel it in myself.
Furthermore, when I ask clients who feel they are wasting their time what they should be doing instead, they usually say “reading books” in contradistinction to watching TV — even if the book is trash and the TV program educational. I take this as evidence that our notion of productivity is at least somewhat culturally-defined, too. There is an ingrained notion that reading anything is better than watching something, just as we assume that studying physics will make you smarter than learning French. And we should not ignore that while social media is less abuzz with people traveling and eating food and doing things together in general — which makes staying home and watching Netflix less of a trade-off — it has shifted to gardening, cooking, baking bread, and, of course, reading books. “Poverty,” says the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, “is a social status, a relation among people.” Perhaps so is productivity.
Speaking of, is the feeling of productivity not also partly biological? Do we not get something from the turning of pages and eventual closing of a book, that we do not get from progressing through a TV show? Is there not something to mailing a letter that is absent from sending an email? I mean, don’t even those who prefer the vita contemplativa feel more satisfaction from cleaning dishes and stowing them away, than listening to a lecture on mirror neurons? — some felt reward resulting from the employment of our hands and the movement of physical objects in a visually-ascertainable way? Felt productivity is a wonderful feeling, one of the only surefire ways to fall asleep at night, without a doubt as to how you lived.
There is also this experience to account for: when I worked in sales just out of college, I would often WFH on Fridays, beginning my day with a list of what I wanted to accomplish: mostly emails, spreadsheets, contracts, notes — you know, computer work. Over time I came to notice that my feeling of productivity barely corresponded to how much of the list I’d finished. In fact, it rarely extended past the visual satisfaction of seeing a mostly crossed-off list. This would often cause me to work late into the night if I didn’t have plans, chasing a feeling of completeness that hardly ever came. But sometimes I’d have a call with a client in the afternoon — usually about something mundane and not overly important, like fixing an order quantity or checking on its status — and yet, especially if the call was long, I would usually feel productive enough to begin the weekend immediately after. I recognized this as illogical, of course, since the call was only one item on the list and did nothing to progress the others; but this did not change the feeling. So perhaps this is another contributor to felt productivity — doing something with or for someone else; a social component.
The mention of lists brings up another point: we have a tendency to overestimate our productive capacity. There are many instances of this, perhaps none so relatable as what we would tell ourselves we would do over the summer, versus what we would accomplish. (I only ever knew one person who read all the books they said they would.) For most of us, the fact of the matter is that our expectations outpace reality. As a result, most people are expecting too much of themselves during lockdown, using their extra time and reflection to create the perfect conditions for disappointment.
So, the blunting or amplification of EA during lockdown depends on a few underlying factors, some of which we have discussed here. For some clients, this recent hiatus from normal activity has brought awareness that life itself shares the same characteristics of time-limitedness, choice among alternatives, and the goal of productivity. Added to this realization is usually resentment: that an entire year and change has been taken from life’s purse. Meanwhile, others cannot remember when life was so vivacious. Previously snowed under, they have used this pause to dig themselves out, and now move at a more comfortable pace. These are the clients who use their sessions wondering aloud if their lives will continue this way after lockdown. Probably not, I mutter to myself, fully aware that I am worried about the same thing. Probably not unless we make some structural changes to our lives; otherwise the old pressure, the old acceleration will return. I’m not sold on humans’ ability to manage their situation more than their situation manages them, and and I don’t think “society” is going to “learn” anything from this. But I suppose we will see for certain soon enough. When do you think that will be? my first set of clients ask desperately, and the image of them watching an hourglass, begrudging every grain of sand, always comes to mind.
