Stop Punishing Yourself When You Actually Get the Job Done; or, Toxic Payoff and its Consequences.

Don't lock up your potential by only giving yourself toxic payoff.

Stop punishing yourself when you get the job done

Do you do this to yourself? You just spent a session of focused, dedicated work on your project. You posted it to the web, took your writing farther, upleveled your coding session -- whatever your goal was. You got so much done toward fulfillment and finishing, maybe even actually reached completion!

Yet, Instead of allowing yourself to relax and glow from a place of encouragement, praise, and appreciating your effort, all you show yourself is all the other things that still aren't done. Your to-do list doesn't seem like it's moved an inch. You feel frustrated, overwhelmed, a failure.

This is toxic payoff, a term I use in my body of work that represents that the only payoff you give yourself for getting your task done, or focusing willingly on the dedicated work session required to move it along farther, is the toxic 'reward' of punishment, shaming and guilting yourself for not doing 'more' or not doing 'enough'. All you show yourself at the endpoint is everything you didn't get to. There's no joyfulness, encouragement, or heart-spirit victory for your focused work, only a feeling of fruitlessness as you end up bashing yourself that the work session you did didn't relieve your burden.

Negative effects of toxic payoff

The tragedy of toxic payoff is twofold: first, you never get to feel that sense of victory, completion, fulfillment and satisfaction that allows you to settle into a well-earned sense of achievement at what you did, and makes you eager to engage with the next session.

Second, continually bashing yourself with toxic payoff can lead you to into a flow of time-wasting, distracting actions simply because they won't lead to that endpoint. So you never work on the big-value items -- only the small stuff (or, procrastination and NO stuff).

Instead of working on the big work, the challenging work, the work that really matters, you end up stuck in low-level tasks. You get involved in clearing out those past emails in your inbox, in doing boring but easy tasks that don't really move the needle, in ticking off the lowest-hanging fruit on your low-hanging-fruit list, or even in a few video or media binges. All the while, your most valuable projects go untouched. And oops, then time has run out, so you couldn't get to your big project anyway.

Why does this happen? Because with these low-level tasks, there's also a low expected payoff. Therefore there's no toxicity -- and no punishment. You expected video binging and deleting old emails to fritter away your time. And they did. So it was a time waster... but at least it "felt OK".

With toxic payoff, you literally create a negative reinforcement that encourages you to waste time, and punishes you for getting REAL things done!

With toxic payoff, you create a negative reinforcement that encourages you to waste time, and punishes you for getting real things done.

Healing from Toxic Payoff

Toxic payoff has many origins, but among them are growing up with critical, unpleasable parents, which often generalizes to being critical and unpleasable with yourself, and just as often as well, to attract unpleasable partners or job situations. All these reinforce toxic payoff unless YOU take the reins and determine that you'll never again engage with this bad habit.

If you find you suffer from toxic payoff, try this instead:

• PAUSE & BREATHE. When you finish a work or creative session, deliberately PAUSE and enjoy the feeling. If you need to set a timer to really shell out and pause, by all means, do so. Pause, settle into it, feel your breath, feel the good feeling.

• Gently BRUSH ASIDE any toxic payoff thoughts such as "well, that was a great hour of focused work -- but I still have all these other things to work on so I guess I'm still just a big loser".

• GLOW about what you got done and how it moved your goals along. "I just spent a really productive hour on this product and it's nearly complete. Woo hoo!" Give yourself a POSITIVE PAYOFF! Appreciate deliberately your willingness, your intense focus, the drive that got things done.

• APPRECIATE that to complete this work session, you necessarily had to trade off other things you might have been doing. That's perfectly OK.

• FEEL DEEPLY how different this feels from the toxic payoff feeling, and how it maintains your willingness to work and produce, rather than waste time in low-level stuff.

Nourish your efforts once your session is naturally at its endpoint for the day. You need this praise and encouragement to maintain the loving-courage to continue to tackle important challenges. Consider your conscious and subconscious as two of your most valuable collaborators. They work hard, and they need to be recognized and nurtured for their contribution. Give them the reward they deserve, and watch your workflow improve.

What will you praise, reward, nourish and encourage in your working flow today? Let the answer to that surprise and delight you with its growth as you #healworklife.

Keep Growing,

Katherine