The motto of Ridge High School might as well be “Do more”. Do more extracurriculars, take more hard classes, do more volunteering — all in an effort to please those profit-making entities we all live our lives for — colleges.
Despite the raging epidemic of burnout and mental health struggles, the question is always “What will give me a better chance at getting into the Ivies?”
Along with the perpetual struggle for “success” has come an obsession with efficiency and productivity — an obsession to constantly do more in less time. After all, it seems like the perfect balance: if you can stack up your resume with a million extracurriculars and somehow also get some sleep, you’ve effectively won at life (many will contend that you can also win without sleep).
And the media isn’t exactly making the obsession any better. Scroll on TikTok or Instagram, and there are thousands of videos about how to maximize your time, better organize your schedule, or fit in 45 different tasks before 7 AM. Alternatively, a quick search on Google will return millions of articles, blogs, and podcasts about devoting your life to efficiency.
It all stems from the way our society and economy require efficiency — in the world’s capitalist frenzy, the fastest and most efficient workers are the most likely to get paid more. Given the extreme influence in our society, efficiency often becomes the top priority, and juggling multiple tasks is seen as normal. Even our language, which equates time with money, proves the overtake of efficiency — time can be spent, wasted, or even bought, ultimately reflecting the constant drive to maximize it.
But while saving time is great, when efficiency turns into an obsession (or even an addiction), it can cause severe harm. Especially since efficiency often ties in with an inherent want for productivity, saved time doesn’t result in leisure time to enjoy, rather it results in more time to fill with yet another extracurricular. This hurts rather than helps students.
When high school students begin to internalize the constant need for efficiency, they can view any time used for pleasure (like reading) as a waste instead of a needed break. This creates internalized feelings of guilt, resulting in negative self-talk and prolonged stress which has adverse mental health effects. Considering the other emotional and mental stressors present every day in high school, constant fear about not doing enough can also turn into anxiety or depression. Additionally, people can only maintain a state of constant productivity for so long — in the end, exhaustion, burnout, and self-sabotage, will prevail, all of which will make working so much harder in the long term [1].
Furthermore, too much efficiency often leads to a decrease in creativity — if a person is constantly looking to maximize their time and just get tasks done as fast as possible, they could easily lose sight of how they could innovate or take the project in a new direction. Rather than thinking of new ideas, they are driven to do the least possible to get the most points. It’s quite ironic — after all, if we want to create a generation of students who can solve world problems, creativity is going to be of utmost importance.
Lastly, Curt Steinhorst, a bestselling author and CEO of Focuswise, finds that efficiency rarely pays off. That’s because an obsession with efficiency inevitably leads to multitasking, but multitasking leads to rapidly switching between tasks, resulting in decreased efficiency. In addition, memory is impaired, and people become poor prioritizers and decision-makers [2]. Ultimately, this just means our pursuit of efficiency is making us worse at tasks. Steinhorst argues that people should be more inefficient, and that “Removing a task list or speedometer from our consciousness for periods of time gives us room to learn, innovate, and create value.” [2]
Perhaps that is the answer — we need to learn not to maximize our time, but rather spend our time carefully addressing each task, taking breaks, and focusing on ourselves. Maybe that means hanging out with friends more, and maybe that means quitting a few activities so that you can prioritize a few to focus on. It will be different for everyone, but parents and students alike must realize that doing everything at once simply isn’t possible.
Let us remember that high schoolers are not robots, nor should they be expected to maximize every second for the most amount of productivity. Strangely, it seems that we’ve forgotten that at the root, high schoolers are just kids — kids who should be able to go and enjoy life.
[1]https://everlastrecovery.com/2021/04/16/obsession-with-productivity