40: Productivity Is a Trap

Daffney challenges the relentless pressure to optimize every aspect of your life and asks a question many high-achieving women avoid: What if slowing down is exactly what you need right now? She explains why pushing through stress, exhaustion, and overwhelm often creates more problems than it solves, how your body may be sending signals you've been ignoring, and why true leadership starts with presence, not productivity. With summer routines shifting and many moms feeling stretched thin, Daffney shares a powerful perspective on creating more connection, more intention, and less guilt. If you've been running on empty and wondering why no amount of doing feels like enough, this conversation is for you.

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In This Episode:

• (01:30) The productivity trap
• (04:35) What your body has been trying to tell you
• (06:00) Summer, motherhood, and the pressure to be everything for everyone
• (10:10) Why slowing down can actually move you forward

Connect with Daffney:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your constant need for productivity is a sickness. We are constantly asking ourselves to be optimized, to push harder, to refine a little further. And I quite honestly am tired of these super guru grifters coming in, letting me know that we somehow are falling behind, that we are not keeping pace and creating this fear-mongering about keeping up with a system that doesn't work. I don't know about you, but at the turn of 40, at the instatement of becoming a mother and recognizing the true nature of that job, of that position, of that opportunity, it wasn't about cashing in my own value to take a title. Welcome to Don't Fing Shrink, the podcast, where we stop playing small and start showing up big. I'm your host, Daphne Allwine, and I'm here to cut through the noise, ditch the self-doubt, and get honest about what it takes to live and lead with unapologetic confidence. Each week you'll hear unfiltered conversations, powerful stories, and in real life strategies to help you take up space in your life, your work, and your world. So buckle up because shrinking is not an option here. Let's dive in. Ladies, can we stop the productivity train? Can we be honest about the fact that being productive is a game. It is a trap. It is an opportunity to disconnect you from thinking and feeling on your own. It feels like breakdown. It feels like a disconnection from your own body. And yeah, we are all shift in hormones, and we are recognizing that we are in this new beautiful chapter where we can reconnect with ourselves, not needing the external validation. Productivity is about keeping you busy and disconnected from what is really, really valuable. Even though you have titles at work, even though you have responsibilities at home, you don't stop having your own human experience. And the fear of judgment is of your own imagination. Yeah, there's always going to be uh people on the internet giving you uh opportunities to reflect on yourself or to check in with yourself. There is always gonna be a not so helpful neighbor, family, you know, member in your circle, but that doesn't make them right. You yourself, grounding yourself in that moment is an opportunity. Yeah, it feels like judgment. It feels like someone is giving their opinion. But what it is is really a manifestation of you choosing your leadership in that moment and saying, I don't need to be productive. I don't have to go to every function I'm invited to. I don't have to chase situations, jobs, or opportunities to feel validated by other human beings. I'm only getting this one body, this opportunity to be healthy and experience health in the way I want to feel and acknowledge it. You know, productivity is one of those things where we optimize and we flaunt and we show and we think that that's what we need to be chasing, whether it's our looks or the hours in the day, when we are maxing out our time, what we're really doing is operating like a machine. And machines break down. In fact, one of the biggest concerns is when we start having breaks in our health, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's mental health, when we start seeing those breaks, sometimes the override and the messages we're getting from outside of us is to keep pushing, keep a smile on, keep going, don't let it affect you, build some armor for it. When the reality is, in order to rebuild an engine, you have to shut it off. You have to turn it off. You cannot fix an engine while reving and running it at high capacity. So often we keep looking for signs from the outside of our body, outside of our experience to know if we're doing things correctly or if we are valid, if we do have value. But the reality is that's a never-ending equation. You cannot find optimization if you're not willing to reflect on what you actually value and check in with yourself. Acknowledge what is happening in your body. I love, and if you have not read this yet, I speak on this so often with clients, the body keeps the score. This is a body we have lived in in whatever number of years and capacity you have that has been trying to share its information with you. So the body keeps the score. When you continue to ignore something going on in your life, when you continue to ignore external stimuluses that are actually costing you to work harder, push harder, and you've turned off your own ears, you've turned off your own experience, this is that moment to stop, pause, and reflect. One of the really cool parts of summer, and I hope that you're having this same experience, is this is a time where we get more daylight. And instead of choosing to fill that daylight with more functions and obligations and oh busy, busy stuff that doesn't really matter. This is an incredible season for you to take advantage of that additional sunlight, that additional vitamin D with the things that actually matter to you most. The summer itself often is a time where mothers take on another job. They literally go from full-time employment with their children in school or supported, right, with other people supporting their children to a time period where now they are becoming the director and they are handling all the summer activities, they're adding tasks to their actual schedule in order to now become a full-time parent without school, without that, that structured schedule. So a lot of times I'm noticing with clients where women are just giving up their summer. They're recognizing that there's too many variables, there are too many things going on, there are too many activities coming their way. So they're actually taking steps back in their career. They're using their vacation time to be home, but not in a way that feels connected to their kids. They're just doing it to cover their spread, to cover their responsibility for additional work. It's like we're taking on another job over the summer. And we become cruise directors for our children, depending on their age, where we need to have play dates for them. We need to have things for them to do. We need to keep them constantly stimulated. We need to, and again, we are completely ignoring our own experience and in some ways actually losing an opportunity to connect with our children in this, in this time where we have more physical availability with them. So I made a really big decision, and I've been encouraging clients to do the same. I'm asking moms to be intentional and thoughtful and kind to themselves, both in their wellness and their physical fitness, their mental health, but recognizing that sometimes schedules have to change. We have to adapt, we have to pivot, we have less resources. So, what I have chosen to do is choose days, literally move my schedule so that I have days dedicated to this grounding, to this opportunity that the summer offers. So I have decided that one day a week is going to be dedicated to one of my daughters. So I will give into the resource of having support for my other daughter and just wholeheartedly connecting with her one day a week. It is the most valuable investment I think I can make. I know sometimes we say we don't have time, we don't have space, we don't have people, I don't have the time away from work. It doesn't have to be a whole day. It could literally be that on Tuesdays, you and whichever, and if you have multiple children, that's that's something to think about because you connect with them all differently with some activity, with something. And it could be a craft project. It could be picking them up from whatever they're doing, whatever, whatever the support is in that case, and just having pre-planned cooking dinner together. Whatever it is, this is an opportunity to not feel like you're taking on more, but you're being very intentional with the time you have. So instead of playing cruise director every day of the summer and trying to, you know, keep up with everyone else and make every appointment and things like that, ground yourself in your own space. Ground yourself in your own schedule. It's not about doing more. It's not about pushing harder. It's about looking for the opportunities to connect where they already exist. Not being afraid to be present, letting go of your own standards of excellence and production and productivity and letting them experience you as a human being. There's no greater leadership out there. There's no greater leadership than them learning who you are as a whole person. It's really nice to have all these trophies and all these accolades on the wall. It's really nice to be recognized and seen and heard by your industry, but God, to know that your children connect with who you are and feel safe and complete in your presence without the anxiousness of go, go, go productivity. What a gift. What an incredible gift. You are a leader in every facet of your life. It's a hat, it's an awareness that I am so excited to take on, especially this summer, that I am a whole person. I don't need to be optimized. I need to be willing to experience the discomfort, experience the joy, and not be at my edge pushing every single day because any productive CEO, any dynamic leader will always tell you the same thing. If you are at your edge, you are not making space for growth, creativity, or the life you want. If you need a little bit of support on where to get started, there is an actual quiz on our website, and you'll find the link here in the bio. What a great check-in when it comes to your physical, your mental, your nervous system, your family, your leadership style. What a great way to check in and give you this quiz, this dynamic way to just sort of snapshot where you might feel like you can get started today. Thanks so much for being part of this show and thanks for not fucking shrinking.