Whenever I’m really busy, I have this habit of writing out a too-perfectly organised to-do list. I make sure there’s just enough time to fit everything in – except, of course, eating, enjoying and living, and then I get through a day or two of this over-the-top schedule. For a while, I can live on the feeling of control and ‘smashing my goals’ it gives me, but by day five, the need to overthrow the ruler always kicks in. I might go for a drink with a friend, and get just silly enough that the next day is a write-off. Or I’ll stay up far too late watching something completely pointless – and I mean until 4 or 5 am late – so that I’m equally useless the next day. Should both of these plans fall through, I’ll feel sick instead. Basically, without fail, I need to sabotage my schedule at least once a week. I then proceed to lie in bed torturing myself over how much I have to do, how I’m doing none of it, and I’m ultimately a useless and ‘bad’ person who just can’t seem to stick to a routine like everyone else!
But here’s the strange part: it works. That useless day never ruins anything – it always lands on a day I can afford to lose. And after it, I’m more focused. I need to be completely ineffective, non-productive, and drained at least once a week just to keep going.The problem is that I’m so stuck in a productivity mindset that I can only rest if I feel like I’ve earned it. And even then, it has to look a certain way. If I declare a rest day, I’ll somehow end up jogging or reading something I have absolutely no interest in. I just want that big eye of the Other in my own mind to see me reading and to think to myself ‘now that’s a person who knows how to rest properly!’ Eventually, I just end up feeling more alienated from myself and more exhausted. At least the exhausted torture of lying in bed all day and being absolutely ‘bad’ enables me to kick that Other’s eye out of view for a few hours.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, there is something super egoic at work in here. Simply put, that superego is the (unconscious) inner critic Freud speaks of, that always pushes us to do better but simultaneously encourages our failing as it affirms its existence.Under capitalism, that voice doesn’t just scold – it co-opts. It tells us to meditate, but only so we can work harder. It sells us self-care as a tool for better performance. Pleasure becomes sucked up and repackaged as a productivity hack that will lead us to some mythical success we think we want, but we’re not even sure we know what it is.
So when I lie in bed, supposedly resting, but end up journaling out of guilt or jogging for no reason, I’m still obeying the taskmaster. The superego has simply been rebranded, from Victorian moralist to wellness coach.
However, the fact that even my rebellion – my useless day – is allowed only because it makes me more productive is what frustrates me the most. It’s a pressure valve, not a real refusal. My burnout is just another part of the system: a sanctioned glitch that keeps the machine running. Even writing this article sucks it up into itself. My uselessness is now useful as I’m using it in my work! Alas, I am redeemed. This is capitalism’s cruel genius – it even takes our resistance and sells it back to us.
So, my point here is that if you too struggle with your inability to stick to your schedule or an inability to live in a routine that we’re told will turn off that voice of relentless judgement, I’d encourage us both to put down the Kool Aid. Struggling with productivity isn’t a personal failing; if anything, it’s a reminder that there’s a part of us that isn’t keen to be bought and packaged as something we can sell to another’s gaze.
So, I suppose, to be truly useless in a world obsessed with goals is something of a quiet act of rebellion. It’s saying: I refuse to be constantly getting somewhere.
This isn’t about giving up on responsibility or sinking into inertia. It’s about making room for a part of yourself that doesn’t need to be justified. It’s reclaiming time as something strange, open and yours. For instance, what thoughts might arise in that state when we step away from that view of ourselves as someone doing things ‘right’? When we bear witness to the wrecks that we are, what good might follow?
Written by Molly Fitz