 As a creator who is probably viewed by many to be toxicly productive, I think it's really important that I speak up about this topic. So in this video, I'm going to cover my thoughts on my own relationship with toxic productivity, my experience with burnout because of it and ways to notice if you are going down the toxic productivity rabbit hole. What is up guys? Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. This video is going to be a little bit different than what we usually do here on the channel. It's going to be a bit more chatty and rambly instead of step one, step two, step three. Let's get right into it. This is toxic productivity. It's actually a fairly new term for me, one that I came across in a random discussion with my girlfriend that I was having a while ago. And then since then I've seen quite a few people in the study space and here on YouTube talking about it. I think the general idea is that some students feel that there has been an increased number of study or productivity focused content here on YouTube and online and that some of this content is having more of a negative than a positive impact on them and on the student community in general. Now there's a subsection of study tube that's dedicated to some fairly extreme content when it comes to studying and productivity. You know, we've all heard of people being called out for doing 10 hour study with me videos or even doing 100 hours of studying in a week. And if you followed my channel for any period of time, then you'll know that I've made some videos along those lines. Toxic productivity is the idea that creators are providing an unrealistic standard about what it means to be productive and what you need to be doing in high school or university or medical school or wherever else. Now of course I couldn't make this video without addressing my own relationship with toxic productivity. Most of the videos that I make on this channel are about how I study at medical school and how to be more productive. Now I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm probably one of those people who is seen as constantly non-stop working and as being toxically productive. And the truth is that I am quite literally working on something with every spare second that I have throughout the day. I'm either typing away on my iPad when I'm on the bus or in the tube. I pretty much never sleep more than seven hours and if I'm not working, I'm constantly doing some activities like hanging out with friends, going to dinners, playing sports. I'm just constantly on the go. Now I realized that this is not the most healthy lifestyle and I'm working on ways to cut this down and sort of take a step back, be more in the moment. But this is my reality right now. Now since I make videos about all of this here on YouTube, I think it's only right that I take responsibility for the messaging that's around my content. Now this is something that I've done ever since the beginning of my YouTube channel. I've always put such strong emphasis on having a balance in life between medical school, this YouTube channel and everything else that's going on. I think the important thing when it comes to creators that talk about productivity is making sure that the content that they put out is balanced and realistic for their own actual lives. So for me, I always like to remind my audience that the content that I make is 100% true to my real life. If I say in a video that I'm going to be studying for an hour, then I'm going to be studying for exactly one hour, not 55 minutes and not an hour and five minutes. Now very importantly, my life is really balanced in a lot of ways and I do my best to show that here on camera and also talk about it in my videos. I'm so proud of how I do manage my time and the fact that I can have a great social life. I can make these YouTube videos and I can still be an active and succeeding medical student. I'm really happy about all of that. My content is based off of my own personal experience and it's just what happens to work well for me. I didn't make this video over here about studying in four hour blocks in order to trick everyone on the Internet into thinking that I studied for longer periods of time than I actually do. I made that video because I do study in four hour blocks and it's something that I find particularly helpful and I was hoping that other people watching it might also find it helpful. And if they wanted to incorporate it into their own study techniques and lives, then they could. I completely acknowledge that studying in four hour blocks is of course not going to work for everyone and I was sure to say that in that video. I'm not expecting anyone to emulate or copy what it is that I do on this YouTube channel. I just want to talk about my own experience and my knowledge in the hopes that other people can learn from it or watching. When I was growing up, I learned so much useful information from other YouTubers, things that I incorporated into my daily life and which have helped me immensely and I'm just trying to do the same. I would absolutely hate to think that anyone watches my videos and feels pressured in some way to model their routine based on mine or feel inferior or like they aren't doing enough or anything like that. That's not at all what I'm trying to achieve here. I think it's great if you watch my videos, you like my studying techniques and you want to incorporate some of that into your own life and that helps you in some way, shape or form, then that's excellent. That really is the goal of this channel and me making these videos. But I do understand that my content isn't for everyone and if you do watch one of my videos and think to yourself, oh my God, this guy is crazy. How could he put so much emphasis on studying? How could he spend so much time studying? Why is he so obsessed with time management? Then you know, that's honestly a completely fine and fair opinion and if that's the case, then my videos probably aren't for you and that's completely okay. Everyone has their own way of learning and I want my content to be there sort of as a guide for what has worked for me and to be explaining and talking about the things that I do personally that have been helpful in my life in the hopes that they can be helpful or valuable to someone else who is watching. Now I understand that mixing up my content with videos that show me relaxing or hanging out with friends could be a more obvious representation of how I have balance in my life whilst being in medical school and studying instead of me just saying or talking about it. Now here on this YouTube channel, I know that you don't often see me hanging out with my friends or playing sports or going out and having fun in London or even the behind the scenes time that I commit to working on this YouTube channel because unless I'm actively recording it and then editing it and then posting it online, you guys are just never going to see it. If you're watching this video and you're not a content creator and I imagine most of you watching are not, then it might be difficult to understand that even though I make videos and I post them online, it doesn't mean that I like filming every aspect of my life or that I like filming constantly throughout the day. You guys get to see the stuff that I want to post, the stuff that I'm passionate about making videos for, which is often productivity based content because that's what I really enjoy filming and that is what I'm passionate about and it's what I enjoy doing. Being productive and completing all my tasks and constantly engaging in new activities and starting up new ideas is what gets me up in the morning and it's what I love talking to my audience about. I think the best content that I can make is about the stuff that I'm genuinely passionate about that I really care about and so this is what dominates my content because it is who I am and I truly enjoy it. Whereas when I'm hanging out with my friends at a bar or I'm playing golf, I'm chilling with my boys here in my room playing video games, I don't always want to pull out a camera and film that and I'm not passionate about filming that. My friends don't really want to be in videos, they've all got their jobs in high profile places and they don't want to have a presence online in that way. At the end of the day, it's just content that I don't really want to make and so I never end up filming it and you guys never get to see it. Now here on the channel, I'm trying to shift towards making more content that lets you get to know me a little bit better and goes beyond just me being really productive and studying. I'll always make productivity and med school based videos as much as I can because that's what I really enjoy doing. That's what I really enjoy making but I think making content where I'm just relaxing, chilling at home with my friends, going on nights out, et cetera just isn't really what I want to film. It's not what I want to make content about. Making that type of content pushes a bit too close into delving into my personal life which is something that I'm not very comfortable sharing online given the fact that I have this large online following. One of the main reasons I wanted to talk about toxic productivity is because I know that some of the content I've posted online obviously isn't sustainable for long periods of time and to give the impression that I do those things every single day, A is simply not true and B is not something that I want to put out there into the world. I've tried to be crystal clear in every video that I post where I'm doing some of those activities to make it obvious that this isn't something that I do every day, I'm just doing it now because I have a big upcoming exam or whatever. You know for example, when I was studying for the USMLE step one, I was studying about 10 hours a day for five months in a row, barely taking any days off and I talked about just how difficult that period was in the videos about the USMLE step one that I made and I talked about how burned out I was feeling in the vlogs after that. Finally done with that horrible exam and I can just move on with my life. After that whole thing, I even took a one and a half month long break from uploading on YouTube because everything just became a little bit too much and I needed a break. Now back then, just as it is right now it was important for me to be open and honest about these things. You know, normalize taking breaks when things are becoming overwhelming and talking about just how difficult, you know that period of time was studying for that exam. Pretending that it was completely fine and that I was happy the whole time studying so long for so many hours with minimal social contact and whatever, serves no purpose at all. I've taken several breaks in my YouTube career or whatever you wanna call it and I've made several videos about that. Those four hour study blogs that I talked about earlier are regular study sessions for me especially leading up to those big exams that we have but moving from four hour study blogs to 10 hours a day studying for the USMV step one was just way too much and I found it very, very difficult. I think being burned out is something that we can all relate to at some point or another in our lives and I think it's important that it's spoken about online in a way that is unjudgmental, realistic and open. I've got several videos on my channel about how I've avoided burnout in the past and how I've dealt with periods when I've been completely burned out and to talk about these situations and normalize them is the right thing to do because everybody goes through it and to sort of give this impression that someone like me who makes videos online never burns out or is constantly super happy and super productive even though that might be the case the majority of the time to say that I never burn out or never go through those difficult periods is simply not true. So ideally we would all be watching and consuming realistic productivity content online. So what do I mean by realistic? Honestly I think it's up to you, the viewer, the person who's consuming the content to decide. It's very possible that it might only take you two hours to learn the same thing that it would take me four hours to learn and that is the same for a lot of students on my course who study less than me and end up performing the same or better than me. And that doesn't make any one of us smarter or better than anyone else. It's just whatever works for you and how you prefer to study and spend your time. In the content that you watch online you might be looking for guides, tips, inspiration or even just someone to sit down and virtually study with you. It's up to you to decide what you want to get from the content that you watch. Be aware of videos with really click baity titles and those very long study with me videos if that's not something that you want to be influenced by. Something that I personally find very helpful when I watch videos online is to remember three key things. The first is that everyone works differently. The second is that I don't know the privileges that the person I'm watching has had to get to the point where they're at right now. And the third is that I'm only seeing a tiny part of this person's life and I don't really know them personally or well enough to get a well rounded view of who they actually are. And this goes for me too. You know, you guys only know what you know about me based off what you've seen on this YouTube channel which is based off what I've chosen to show and what I've chosen to film and edit and record and upload. And even though I do my very best to make sure that everything matches my real life one to one, it can really be difficult sometimes. Just like everything else in life, I think it's important that we watch these YouTube videos and we consume this content with a grain of salt. The end point is that I can't really compare myself to the people that I watch online because I just don't know enough about them to say how similar our situations and environments are to be able to make a comparison like that. I really wanted to add a segment to this video about the ways that you can pick up on whether toxic productivity is negatively impacting you. I think this would be really valuable for anyone who's worried about this becoming a potential issue. I personally would have loved to watch a video like this a couple of months ago when I was just so overworking myself and pushing myself so hard to the point of burnout. So here it is. First things first, if you're comparing yourself to other people online and this is leading to you overworking yourself and even burning out, this is a big red flag. If you feel anxious all the time, even when you're at work or when you're supposed to be relaxing, even though you desperately need some downtime and your successes just don't feel like enough, then this might be a good time to take a step back and reassess how it is that you're feeling and some of the productivity content that you might be watching online. This is something that I've battled with over the last couple of years because pretty much the only channels and people that I follow online are productivity channels or really successful medical students or entrepreneurs. And so my entire information diet of what I consume is people just really succeeding at life, smashing it out of the park, working very hard, being successful, completing all their goals, et cetera. Now, because this is all the content I consume, I definitely go through times where I feel that I'm not doing enough or that I should be doing more and I should be working harder. And when I kind of realized that that's happening, that's when I decided to take a step back. I literally just stopped consuming that content across all of my social media channels, you know, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. I reevaluate myself, my working methods, my techniques, my efforts, et cetera, and I readjust. Now, me watching all of those productivity and successful videos and feeling like I'm not working hard enough or I'm not doing enough doesn't necessarily mean that those people are doing something wrong. And I think this is a really important point. Those people are making content about things they enjoy and things that they are passionate about. If I'm personally not in the correct state of mind or the correct place in my life to be consuming and enjoying that type of content, I don't have to watch it. And after I go through that period of readjustment and reevaluation, you know, not consuming that content for a period of time, I always go back to it because that's what I enjoy watching. I love watching other people working on their goals and being successful. And I find it very motivating. And at points where it gets too much, I can take a step back and realize that, you know, this just isn't the content that I need to be consuming right now. I think the key is to realize that this is happening to you so that you can spot it and actively change it. So what's next for this channel? I wanna keep making content that I'm actually passionate about, studying productivity, medical school, et cetera. But I wanna keep emphasizing that balance is very crucial. I'm gonna keep listening to you guys about what videos you're finding helpful and what's actually adding value to your lives and hopefully make more content surrounding that in the future. I'd love to continue this conversation in the comments down below. I'm actually really interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions on these topics and what you guys have to say. So please do leave me a comment there and I'll do my best to respond to as many as I can. As always, I wish you all a wonderful day, all the best, and I'll catch you in the next one. Peace. I'm out and having fun events. Having fun events. I swear I'm such a grandpa sometimes.