The Quiet Anxiety of “I Should’ve Done More”

You’re doing enough, but you need to keep thinking that you’re not.

I open my calendar and see three internal meetings and two customer meetings, each running forty five minutes to an hour. That’s the entire day. I know immediately that any real work is going to start around 4pm.

That’s assuming I get a few minutes to recalibrate between meetings. Add in scrambling to the bathroom and before I know it, I’m sending the familiar Slack message: “running five minutes behind.”

I get home at 8pm and somehow feel like the day got away from me, like I was anything but productive.

I grab a quick bite and catch myself thinking, “Can I squeeze in another thirty minutes of work?”

At least, that’s how I characterize it.

Is that all accurate? Sure, if you strip out my exaggerations.

But I don’t think that framing is healthy. For a long time, it brought on a ton of anxiety. Until one day, I stopped and actually reflected.

You might think I’m about to go on a rant about meetings and how they’re a waste of time. That’s not what this is about, so let me reframe before we go too far down the rabbit hole.

Am I doing myself a disservice by labeling myself as unproductive and treating meetings as the fog standing between me and the holy land of productivity?

I think so.

For the sake of this conversation, let’s assume our best work happens outside of meetings.

When I reflect honestly, it’s hard to deny that progress is happening in those meetings. At a minimum, there’s movement. Decisions get made. Direction shifts. Things move forward.

As this battle plays out in my head, you can probably feel the anxiety starting to brew.

And I can’t help but wonder if this exact way of thinking, unhealthy in so many ways, is also necessary.

I’ll explain.

Believing there is more to do is a fine line. Lean too far in either direction and it gets costly.

On one end, you can drift into laziness, living a life that doesn’t move you any closer to the one you actually want.

On the other, you can be so hard on yourself that you create constant dissatisfaction and eventually burn yourself out.

So before you climb on your soapbox, I’m not advocating for either extreme.

But there is a sweet spot worth exploring.

When I don’t assume I’m doing enough, as long as it doesn’t spiral into self punishment, something interesting happens. Gaps start to surface. Areas where I can do more become visible.

Momentum builds.

That’s the beauty of reflection. You rely less on preconceived notions and assumptions, and more on what actually happened.

When I dig deeper, I realize those gaps would have stayed hidden if I had been content with my productivity.

Keep zooming out. You start to see the tide slowly moving in the right direction.

The results will vary, but one thing is guaranteed. You are moving forward.

It’s a strange feeling to recognize that a mindset can be both detrimental and, in some ways, the fuel for growth.

If you haven’t noticed yet, we as humans struggle with dualities.

We feel pulled toward choosing one conclusion, one perspective, one truth, as if parallel ideas cannot coexist.

I’m not immune to that.

But staying open to the idea that contrasting thoughts can exist at the same time has helped me navigate this tension.

Balance is easy to talk about. Executing it is an entirely different thing.

Like most mental shifts, there are no silver bullets.

The real work is building the awareness to hold multiple thoughts at once.

Be proud of your work ethic if you’re pushing yourself. Just don’t turn that drive inward and beat yourself up with exaggerated stories about your own lack of effort.

In other words, don’t lose the ability to be dissatisfied with average, while still reminding yourself that you are enough, you work hard, and perfection was never on the table to begin with.