Productivity shame comes from unrealistic goals and measuring your self-worth with achievements. Productivity measures the efficiency of a person completing a task expressed in numbers. Even your life is measured in numbers.

According to the United Nations, today’s average global life expectancy is 72 - 70 for men and 75 for women. If a person livers to age 69, another 17 years can be added to that total, and the life expectancy becomes 86 on average. In the United States, life expectancy in 2019 was 78.87 years, but if a person reaches the age of 69, that time is lengthened to 85 years on average.

Establishing how many years of a person’s life will be productive is subjective. Productivity can be a philosophy of life, a state of mind, or even someone’s opinion. Freeing yourself from productivity shame requires you to stop defining your self-worth by quantitative accomplishments.

Instead of setting a goal to do all you can, decide how much is enough for each undertaking. For your individual goals to be realistic, you need to be able to answer the question of why you want that goal. Then you need to recognize that making progress is enough and take satisfaction in doing just that.