Week 2: Your relationship to work & productivity

Jan. 30-Feb. 5

Jenn Chen

Jan 29, 2023 — 3 min read

Welcome to Week 2 of Creative Sparks. In Week 1, we looked at shadow patterns and the work it inspires. If you haven’t completed the Week 1 prompt or you’re just joining us, don’t worry! You can catch up or jump in now. Don’t let this be the thing that stops you from doing the challenge.

This week, it’s time for a bit of introspection.

Around this time of the year is when 64% of people who set new year’s resolutions quit. There’s a lot of pressure to drastically change at meaningful (to you) markers of time. This year will be different, we tell ourselves. And then we set absurdly high goals that are doomed to fail. If you don’t set a resolution or goal, you feel like you’re behind, which is not a good feeling to carry in the first month of the year. If it helps relieve some of this worry, only 38.5% of US adults will set a resolution for the year…so you’re not alone in this!

For this week’s creative prompt, we turn inwards to reflect on how we see work and productivity. Are they tied together in your mind? Do you need work and/or productivity to feel like you’ve accomplished something?

“Quiet quitting” has been in the news lately, as if meeting job description expectations was a bad thing. When did it become expected that you must go above and beyond to be considered a good worker? If anything, the recent tech layoffs—of workers that had been with the companies for long stretches of time—show how callous a company can be. Loyalty is demanded in one direction only.

Examples & directions to go:

If you were to be given a sustainable income and all your monetary needs taken care of, would you work? What would you do?
What does it mean to you to “do nothing”?
Examine and reflect on your self-care rituals. What does each one do for you?
Think about your upbringing: has your interpretation of work and productivity changed from childhood?