Why Being an Overachiever Is Setting You up to Fail

Capitalism survives on productivity. The more one person is producing, supposedly the more benefits they will reap because of their quote on quote “hard work”. But what type of culture around hard work and “pushing one’s limits” can this create? And, most importantly, what does growing up within this culture mean for teenagers? 

The culture of productivity. As the economy sets into what has been commonly referred to as late-stage capitalism, production and the concept of productivity have become more important than ever. While this is unquestionably shown in work environments, productivity is similarly advertised with the utmost importance to kids starting in the earliest years of childhood. From the moment a human can stand, they are immersed and drowned in the idea of always doing things to achieve a goal, and benefit from said goal; the supposed idea of productivity. Once you can walk around and pick things up on your own, the idea of “chores” is introduced. The more chores you do, the more rewards you get. These rewards often look different from household to household, varying upon socioeconomic status and what type of chores you are physically able to complete. Let us say that in the blue house, the more chores you do the more loving and kind your parents are to you. The more chores you do in the red house, the more money you make, and the more control you can have over other aspects of your life. The more chores you do in the yellow house, the less horror you have to face when your parents get home. In every house, the idea of working and producing more is met with a reward or benefit of sorts, teaching the child that the more you can work the better your life is going to be. This lesson is, unfortunately, true, and an essential one to learn if one is to work within the systems of late-stage capitalism. Quoting a blog post published by TheFluetyFeminist titled On Productivity and Capitalism, “But at the core, our society operates on the belief that to be a valued member of society, you must be productive.” This belief follows children from their early years into teenagehood, which I would argue is when the most damaging effects of productivity culture begin to settle in. 

By the time I graduate high school, I envision myself being a star. I have always been told that I am just “such an overachiever!” I questioned if that was a compliment, or maybe a forceful prophecy meant to spell out what my future can look like. I am supposed to be valedictorian and class president the phrase says, it guarantees that I can go to college and not come out with mounds of student loan debt. Because I am an “overachiever”, those things are supposedly guaranteed for me. But at what cost does being an overachiever come at? 

The in-school overachiever is capitalism's dream baby. Constantly working and producing, never pausing to breathe or take breaks, never having time to contemplate what they have to benefit from this relationship. However, what the productivity culture fails to acknowledge when manifesting itself into the overachiever mindset, is that production and working during teenage years does not completely revolve around school. Deeming oneself as productive depends on a myriad of factors. Productivity requires energy, to be productive in school it is assumed that all of your energy is being put towards school. This disregards those who simply do not have the luxury of doing so. Teens who work a part-time job, who care for siblings and take on the role of parent, teens who are working through traumatic experiences every day of their existence. All of these things take extensive amounts of energy, meaning that people who are in these situations have less energy to put toward their so-called productivity. These things that prevent teenagers from achieving status as “over-achievers” can also be identified as environmental barriers.

In an article titled Laziness Does Not Exist written by social psychologist Devon Price, he presents the theory that the lack of ability in a person to do something is not rooted in laziness or total unwillingness to complete the task, but in ‘environmental barriers’ that prevent said person from completing said task. This outlook brings up the prospect that lack of productivity is not the fault of the individual on which that expectation was placed, but rather the cause of environmental barriers that prevent the individual from reaching said goal of productivity. Concerning being maximally productive in school or reaching overachiever status, environmental barriers can look like taking long commutes to and from school or having to fulfill the role as a parent when home. Though it should be noted that environmental barriers do not have to be related to intensely traumatic experiences. An environmental barrier can be having to support your family financially, leaving little time to be productive and “doing one’s best” in school, but it can also be the suffocating culture of productivity itself. While always being encouraged to do your best, there is the subtle implication that what you should be striving for is doing the best out of everyone else. The crushing weight of striving to be the highest achiever is a trauma loaded onto every teenager, hence why this is a barrier within many students that can look like laziness to the unknowing eye, but in reality, stems from the fear of not being productive enough. By not being productive enough teens are therefore not worthy of sympathy, not good enough to be a valuable member of society. 

While being continually exposed to this productivity is everything culture, teens also see that working yourself to death pays off. Physical manifestations of maximum productivity for teenagers are shown in the honor roll, who wins valedictorian and how many clubs you can run. All of these things contribute to what productivity promises to reward one with, getting into a “good” college, officially setting one on the path to be a valuable person. Furthermore, becoming an overachiever to obtain this physical manifestation of success is used in popular culture to disprove these environmental barriers that I talked about earlier. If you’re in poverty, just work harder and go to a “good” college. Never mind that you may already be studying for hours on end, only stopping to go to work and take care of family members, and are still unable to jump up to the highest podium of productivity, just work harder. Because in the mind of a capitalist productive eye, there is no room for these environmental barriers. In schools, there is no room for these environmental barriers. And, later in life, in jobs, there is also no room for environmental barriers. And this is the exact flaw in the idea of being productive, which is that productivity is not even accurately named. Productivity can not depend on how much a person produces, because that is not entirely within one’s control. Capitalism says that if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work without ever thinking of an end, you are productive. It fails to recognize that people are putting energy into things (a.k.a working) every day, but not every task where one is working yields a product. 

This overachiever mindset, which is bread by the culture of productivity, uses the idea of overproduction as a way to not only reach “success” but also to be a solution to generational and systematic issues like poverty. Yet no matter how hard the idea is pushed, life circumstances continue to defy this so-called “solution”. And it is not because people are lazy or simply less than; nobody starts on the same starting line in life. Capitalism fails to account for the multitude of other issues like systemic racism and sexism that it has created that don’t allow people to equally participate in this productivity culture. And by doing so, instead of empathizing with people who reject the idea of productivity, or are unable to conform to what is viewed as a productive person, they are shunned. This tells teenagers that if you aren’t sacrificing everything you have to “do your best”, really to do the best, then you must be worthless. You are a lost cause. But at a point, the flaw even embeds itself into the overachiever. It doesn’t matter whether you can achieve the status of over-achiever after working for it for decades because once you get there, it doesn’t stop. One keeps overworking themselves to the point of burnout, and then in turn gets grouped in with the rest of the “unproductive” shunned people. I ask if this system is beneficial to anyone at all. If the productive and unproductive people don’t exist, if the over-achiever and under-achiever don’t exist, then why is this idea of producing as much as possible encouraged so widely? I do not think it should be. 

There is no winning in the game of late-stage capitalism. There is unequal footing, people who are given a head start, but even then they will never make it to the finish line. So I ask other teenagers reading this essay, why be productive? I understand the short-term benefits, I want to go to college too. But if you could just keep these questions floating around. What is productivity? What prevents me from being as productive as them? Why am I able to be more productive than them? Why am I still trying to be productive, when none of these things I am doing are even productive for me, as an individual?