Learn English Language - What Does Toxic Productivity Looks Like?
Have you ever felt like you’re working hard but never quite catching up? That might be toxic productivity at play. Today while we listen & learn English we discover how to say no and manage expectations to avoid overcommitting yourself.
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So what if working harder on your English isn’t the answer? Maybe the secret lies in working less and listening more. By the end of this lesson, you will know how to spot the signs of toxic productivity in your own life.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.
⭐ Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX
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More About This Lesson
Ever felt like you’re running on empty, but still pushing to do more? You’re not alone. Discover the surprising truth about toxic productivity while expanding your English skills. This lesson blends real-life insights with fluency tips you don’t want to miss!
Work smarter, not harder. Focus on balance.
⭐ Taylor Swift, Grammy-winning artist
In this lesson, you’ll learn about the hidden dangers of toxic productivity—a common problem in today’s busy world. You will:
- Improve your speaking fluency by learning real-life vocabulary like "toxic productivity."
- Master useful English phrases for conversations about work, life balance, and health.
- Expand your vocabulary with terms like "burnout," "vegging out," and "Pareto Principle."
- Understand grammar through clear examples like "chronic" and "perfectionism."
- Enhance listening skills with a native speaker's clear, relatable explanations.
- Practice pronunciation of challenging words like "toxic," "worth," and "productive."
- Learn idioms and informal verbs, such as "veg out," for natural English communication.
- Gain insights into British culture and work-life expectations to enrich your language use.
- Build confidence in discussing psychological and workplace topics fluently.
- Pick up practical study tips for improving your English steadily and effectively.
Learning English can be more fun and meaningful when you explore real-life topics like toxic productivity. This lesson combines practical language tips with insights into a challenge many people face. As you listen, you’ll improve your English fluency, gain helpful phrases for conversations, and learn how to spot burnout. It’s a smart way to practise English while understanding an issue that affects everyone.
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Success isn't about grinding yourself into the ground. Take breaks, reset, come back stronger. That's real productivity.
⭐ Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam champion
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What is toxic productivity and why should English learners understand this concept? Toxic productivity is a modern phenomenon where you constantly push yourself to achieve more, even at the cost of your wellbeing. As you learn British English, understanding this concept is crucial because it's frequently discussed in workplace conversations and helps you grasp important vocabulary about work-life balance. Plus, the topic itself contains many useful collocations and idioms that will enhance your fluency.
- How can listening to this lesson improve my British English speaking skills? This lesson helps you develop natural British English speech patterns by teaching you authentic expressions like 'vegging out' and contextual uses of words like 'toxic' and 'chronic'. You'll learn how native speakers discuss mental health and workplace culture, which is invaluable for business English and social conversations. The psychotherapist's clear British accent also helps you improve your pronunciation.
- What level of English is needed to understand this lesson? You can benefit from this lesson if you're at an intermediate (B1-B2) level. The vocabulary is carefully explained, and complex terms are broken down with examples. If you're at a lower level, you can still gain value by focusing on the basic vocabulary and repeated listening. Advanced learners will appreciate the nuanced discussions about workplace culture and mental health.
- Can I learn professional British English vocabulary from this lesson? Yes! You'll learn professional terms commonly used in British workplaces, such as 'over-commitment', 'perfectionist', and 'burnout'. These words are essential for business conversations and job interviews in English-speaking environments. The lesson presents these terms in context, making them easier to remember and use naturally in your own speech.
- What practical language skills will I develop from this lesson? You'll develop several key language skills: understanding British intonation patterns, learning workplace wellbeing vocabulary, mastering idiomatic expressions, and improving your listening comprehension. The lesson also teaches you how to express complex ideas about productivity and mental health, which is valuable for professional and personal conversations in English.
Most Unusual Words:
- Toxic: Harmful or causing damage, especially to health or feelings.
- Productivity: How much work you get done or how efficient you are.
- Burnout: Extreme tiredness from working too much for too long.
- Chronic: Happening repeatedly or lasting for a long time.
- Perfectionism: The need to do everything perfectly, without mistakes.
- Veg out: To relax and do nothing productive, like watching TV.
- Worth: The value or importance you feel you have.
- Pareto Principle: A rule that says 20% of effort gives 80% of results.
- Over-commitment: Agreeing to do too many things at once.
- Aspire: To want or try to achieve something important.
Most Frequently Used Words:
| Word | Count |
|---|---|
| Toxic | 20 |
| About | 11 |
| Achieve | 9 |
| Might | 9 |
| Vegging | 9 |
| Productivity | 8 |
| People | 7 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
Transcript: Learn English While Tackling Toxic Productivity
Toxic Productivity - do you suffer from this?
Hi there! Have you ever felt overwhelmed, like things are too much? Have you ever felt the pressure to do more, achieve more, even when it feels too much? A new phrase for you to learn in English? And a new idea which is very apt for our modern world? That idea is 'toxic productivity'. Lots of people suffer from this and until recently it didn't have a name. But we've now found a name for this phenomenon and I can think of many well-known figures who might suffer from 'toxic productivity'. Could this be something affecting you without you realising it? Or maybe it's affecting someone you're close to? In this podcast you'll learn how to spot this modern day phenomenon, improve your mindset and learn useful English phrases while you're at it. By the end of this podcast you'll know how to spot signs of 'toxic productivity' in your own life. And this comes from my experience as a psychotherapist, so it's 'tried and tested'. And of course while listening to this you'll be improving your English at the same time. We try to be inspiring, interesting, useful and informative.
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
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What do the words ‘Toxic Productivity’ mean?
First of all today, let's unpack the vocabulary of 'toxic productivity'. The word 'toxic', T-O-X-I-C, used to be used about the physical world only. If something's 'toxic', we're talking about a substance that might do us harm. So there might be 'toxic' chemicals in the ground, in the soil, and this might affect our water supply. Or there might be 'toxic' chemicals in the air that we breathe, which could do us harm. But in recent years this word 'toxic' has also come to mean what's harmful to us psychologically, in our minds. So we talk about 'toxic' relationships, relationships which do us damage. We might talk about 'toxic' parenting, or about 'toxic' habits, or having a 'toxic' workplace even. What we mean by this word 'toxic' is that the person, the relationship, or the situation does us harm. It's unacceptable and causes us mental damage or unhappiness over a long period of time.
📷
A woman taking a few minutes away from work. Learn to express complex feelings about productivity in natural English
So 'toxic productivity' - 'productivity', P-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-V-I-T-Y. Well this now means 'how much we produce, how hard we work, how efficient we are'. How good we are at producing what our employer wants us to do perhaps. And we might complain, "Oh, I've not been very productive today!" Meaning perhaps I've been online looking at Instagram or Snapchat instead of doing what I should be doing! So of course we need to be productive in our lives. We need to aspire, strive, have the wish to achieve more in our lives. For ourselves, for our families perhaps. So productivity is good, isn't it? Well at a wider economic level governments are always trying 'to increase economic productivity'. And in the UK at least, the government is despairing about the number of days off sick people take each year. That's not productive.
### Can productivity become a bad thing?
But perhaps where productivity becomes 'toxic' is where the cost to the person is too much. An extreme example, if you stayed up all night to complete a piece of work for your job that might be a heroic or a good thing to do as a one-off, as one time. But if you were to do that frequently, clearly your productivity would be doing you damage. That's an extreme example. What's more likely to affect us is 'chronic toxic productivity'. If something is 'chronic', C-H-R-O-N-I-C, it goes on over a long period of time. But it may still have a damaging effect on our physical and our mental health. Here are two questions to help you identify whether you're affected by 'toxic productivity'.
Do you feel guilty when you take a break from work as if you're wasting your valuable time? And do you feel that you're worth W-O-R-T-H, depends on constant hard work and that if you just 'be', you're not worth anything?
On the way to burn out?
From being small children, most of us are encouraged to be productive, to work hard, to be busy, to achieve. We need to pass our exams, work hard at school and college, get jobs, get promotions, work hard at the gym, work on ourselves. We're supposed to do whatever it takes to achieve these things. And these messages about working hard, being productive, and about achieving things - they start early, right from the start of school usually. The British private school system is very good at educating people and is admired across the world. Well, I notice that adults who as children were in the British private school system are particularly vulnerable to 'toxic productivity' as adults. That's not to say that private schools are bad, but this is an environment where there is a real focus on achievement.
And if you're a young adult in the UK, especially living in London, and I'm sure many other places around the world, you have to work really hard just to achieve the basics in life. Everything is so expensive, costs so much, that you have to work really hard just to have a place to live, just to pay your bills. So working hard has become so much part of our culture, we see it as normal. We are familiar with the term 'burnout', when someone is literally so tired, so exhausted, so broken by their busy life that they just can't carry on. They can't function normally anymore. It's best to stop before that happens. And 'toxic productivity', may be what happens on the way to 'burnout'.
Five ways to spot toxic productivity in yourself and others
How to spot 'toxic productivity'? So here are five questions to ask yourself.
1. Do you feel valuable when you’re not working?
One. Does your positive view of yourself depend upon how productive you are? If you feel bad when you take a day off, that can be a sign. If it's difficult to allow yourself to relax, take time out, unwind, enjoy yourself. If doing this makes you feel guilty or as though you're worthless, this can be a sign of 'toxic productivity'. It can take over your life gradually. And if you measure your personal value, not by what you've already achieved, but by how productive you've been today, that can show there's a problem.
2. Are you driven by perfectionism?
Two. Are you a perfectionist? That's P-E-R-F-E-C-T-I-S-T. If you're a perfectionist, you tend to believe that you need to be perfect in order to just be OK. I meet lots of people in my work who have perfectionism as one of their main drivers. While that may sometimes push them to achieve brilliant work, perfectionism isn't good for your health. The problem is, if you're a perfectionist and it's helped you, you like that side of yourself! You don't suspect that it might harm you or be bad in any way. A common way to see things if you're a perfectionist - if you achieve 100% success, that's OK. But 99% or less - well, that's failure. That's perfectionist thinking. Do you think like that?
3. Do you overcommit?
Three. Do you find yourself saying 'Yes' to lots of things, even when you're already stretched and have too much to do? This is called 'over-commitment', and it's worth addressing if you do this. If you too easily say 'Yes!', or 'I'll do it!' or 'Leave it to me!', you're probably prone to overcommitting. You may take on a role for your child's school when you're already busy with work. You may be the one that always books the table for the restaurant meal with friends or organises social get-togethers or hosts - the one who always cooks dinner for everyone. And of course, often everyone else is happy to let you do it. So over-commitment is when you readily agree to take on extra tasks, even though you haven't got the time or the energy necessarily. And the busiest people are often the ones who take on even more commitments, while other less busy people avoid taking on extra work or tasks. And of course, if you're a perfectionist, if you've agreed to do something, then you have to do it 100% perfectly. That perfectionist part of yourself is not going to let you off any less.
4. Are you comfortable with vegging out?
Four. Do you criticise yourself for 'vegging out'? That's an informal verb 'to veg out', V-E-G. Well, it means that we 'behave like a vegetable', as though we have no purposeful or functioning brain! That's 'to veg out'. So 'vegging out' may mean simply watching TV or going on social media or doing something similarly unproductive. If busy, driven people find themselves 'vegging out', they can feel terrible about it. "What a waste of time!", they say, and it can really affect their self-esteem, their positive view of themselves. But I say, if you spend a very large part of your life being productive, working hard towards your goals, then you need to 'veg out' sometimes. Try to see 'vegging out' as a positive. It's helping you achieve a balance. If you find yourself engaging in an activity that doesn't accomplish very much, that's kind of the point. You're taking time off and doing something that's not worthwhile, even though it can give you pleasure.
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'Vegging out' time is needed to balance those times when you've been very productive, when you've worked very hard. And the hard work times are really only possible because you have had 'vegging out' times to balance them. So try to see 'vegging out' as a positive, it's like a type of rest and it helps you achieve some balance. 'Vegging out' could perhaps even be said to protect you against burnout. And if you're unhappy with the activities you do when you 'veg out', it's often better to choose non-digital activities. Go for a walk, look after your houseplants, phone a friend or read a book. Then you can feel good about your 'vegging out' time. You can see these as positive activities, but you're having a rest, which is good.
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5. Do you try to do everything on your list - all tasks are equal?
Five. Do you try to achieve everything on your to-do list? If you do, this is probably a mistake. I'm sure you're familiar with the Pareto Principle, that's P-A-R-E-T-O. Pareto was an Italian economist and social scientist in the early 20th century. His main idea, 80% of outcomes result from 20% of effort, 20% of the actions we take. So this Pareto Principle is useful for lots of things. It's also known as 'The Law of the Vital Few and the Trivial Many'. If only 20% of our tasks result in 80% of the outcome, it's good to be more focused in our efforts. Not every task has equal value. So focus on the ones that accomplish most and let go the ones that don't. When you're working, there comes a point when it's more important to stop, relax, rest and do something else.
Goodbye
As ever, let us know what you think. Let us know if you think you suffer from 'toxic productivity'. Let me know whether the words were too easy or too difficult and do email us with any suggestions for podcast topics. We're always listening.
Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
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