On some days, I sleep until 1 pm, and my mom calls me “lazy bones”. Right as I begin to wake up, before I fully remember everything I have to do, I feel calm. I look at the light coming through my window and see dust flying around. I hear birds, the ruffle of my sheets, and the wind blowing. But once I am fully awake, it all creeps back in: messages from my coach, teacher emails, assignments, and more. It may look like I’m doing nothing when lying in bed, but my mind is loud. I hear everything I should be doing, could be doing better, and even what I’m falling behind on. It can take hours for that voice to quiet down enough for me to rest. When you are a high schooler who feels guilty about sleeping until 1 pm, like me, I assert that we are not ‘lazy’; we are living in a culture that treats rest like a character flaw.
At my high school, there is no real off switch. It’s go, go, GO! On, On, ON! My days are filled before they start: classes, practices, meetings, homework, college counseling, SAT work, and trying to stay social enough so that I do not spiral. There is always something that needs attention, and if there isn’t, it feels like there should be. On days when I finish my homework before 10 pm, I still don’t feel finished. The only real day off here is Sunday, but I still end up spending the whole day in the library. So, sleeping till 1 pm on break isn’t laziness—it is the only way to make the demanding noise of expectation stop.
There is a term for this feeling: toxic productivity. Harvard Health describes it as “an obsessive preoccupation with being productive at all costs and never feeling like what you’ve done is enough” (Salamon 2024), even when it begins to harm you. It is the belief that our worth is tied to how much we produce. And it’s everywhere: in schools and in the workforce.
“I only slept 3 hours because of that history paper.”
“I’m just gonna grind all night to meet my deadlines.”
These lines land like badges of honor in high school hallways and around the office. According to Employee Benefit News, nearly all Gen Z workers, “98%, are dealing with symptoms of burnout… and 48% feel drained”. That is our generation’s reality before we even hit our 30s. One writer even called toxic productivity Gen Z’s Achilles heel; we are incredibly capable, but terrible at turning off. So we learn to measure ourselves by how many APs we take and how many hours we sleep (the fewer the better!). It will be the end of us! Or, at least, the end of our happiness.
And it is not just us, Gen Z’ers. Another global report summarized in Forbes found that 80% of employees are at risk of burnout this year, with overwhelming workloads, fatigue, and financial stress driving the crisis. When almost everyone in the workforce is dealing with burnout, “always on” stops being an individual choice and starts becoming the water we all swim in.
Here’s the twist: the grind culture we proudly live by is not benefiting us. Stanford professor John Pencavel found that those who work 70 hours a week accomplish the same amount as those who work 55. In other words, the extra 15 hours are often merely filled with fatigue and anxiety. For us, we stay up until 2 am rewriting the same paragraph, staring at our Canvas, and calling it “dedication.” But if adults in offices are grinding through 70-hour weeks to get 55 hours of real work done, our 5-hour grinds at midnight aren’t heroic either.
Some people argue that productivity is not the enemy; it is actually our greatest tool. The Institute for the Future of Work argues that greater productivity supports “good work” (Pissarides 2023). And they are not entirely wrong. But productivity is a tool that needs to be managed, to be turned off at times. The issue is not working hard toward something you care about. The issue is when productivity stops becoming a tool and becomes an identity, that badge of honor. When our value as students is measured only in output, grades, hours, and achievements, we start ignoring the basic human needs that allow us to lead happy lives. At that point, productivity stops serving us, and we start serving it.
It is time we start treating rest as something we do not have to earn. That might mean sleeping until 1 pm on a Sunday. That might mean closing your laptop at 10 pm, even when your friends are still hard at work. It might mean reminding ourselves that we are more than just college applications and acceptances. Choosing to pause can feel wrong, but it shouldn’t. We are not machines, and our worth is not measured by how much we produce. Learning to rest, even when that voice in our head tells us we have not done enough, is one of the most useful skills we can acquire.
