When Productivity Becomes Identity

On Saturdays, I like to watch space documentaries with my daughter. She once told me she wanted to be an astronaut, and since then I’ve found ways to sneak in my own love for space and astrophysics… partly because I enjoy it, and partly because it gives us time together.

But there were moments when I would get up to run errands, and every time I stood, she would ask, “Are you going to work?” Eventually, the question became simpler and harder to ignore: “Do you have to work today?”

That question lingered. Not because I was always leaving, but because I began to realize something more uncomfortable. There were times when I was home with my family and still working. A laptop open here. A phone in hand there. Work hadn’t just followed me home, it had quietly taken up residence. Somewhere along the way, productivity had become more than something I did. It had begun to shape how present I was—and how I understood my role, even in the moments that were supposed to be set apart.

There is a subtle moment many of us recognize, even if we rarely name it—the moment when “being busy” stops describing what we do and starts describing who we are.

It often shows up in ordinary ways. A conversation that begins with, “I’ve just been slammed lately.” A sense of guilt when rest feels unearned. A quiet anxiety when productivity slows and we are left alone with ourselves. None of these moments feel dramatic. But together, they tell a story about how worth is being measured. In a culture that prizes output, productivity can easily become more than a tool. It becomes a signal. A shorthand for value. A way of proving, to ourselves and to others, that we matter.  

The problem is not work. The problem is what happens when work is asked to carry more weight than it was ever meant to bear.

When productivity defines worth, purpose begins to shrink. Instead of asking what kind of life we are being formed into, we begin asking how efficiently we can perform. Instead of measuring growth by wisdom, character, or depth, we measure it by speed, scale, and results. The question quietly shifts from "Who am I becoming?” to “Am I doing enough?”

This shift rarely happens by choice. It happens by absorption.

We live inside systems that reward constant availability, visible output, and measurable success. Over time, those external rewards become internalized. What begins as a healthy desire to contribute slowly turns into a fear of falling behind. Rest starts to feel irresponsible. Limits feel like weakness. And purpose, once rooted in meaning and calling, gets reduced to performance. The cost of this shift is not always immediate, but it is real.

When productivity becomes identity, exhaustion is no longer a warning sign; it becomes a badge of honor. Boundaries feel selfish. Stillness feels unproductive. And people who cannot keep pace because of illness, caregiving, age, or circumstance are left feeling invisible or inadequate.

There is an ancient story that helps name this dynamic without romanticizing it. When the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, their value was measured almost entirely by output. Their worth was calculated by the number of bricks they produced, day after day. When production slowed, punishment followed. They were not seen as people with limits, stories, or dignity, but as labor to be managed and maximized.

What makes that story enduring is not just the suffering it names, but the vision of humanity it exposes. Slavery reduced people to what they could produce. Freedom, in contrast, was not simply the absence of work, it was the restoration of identity. They were freed not to stop doing, but to become a people again.

The danger we face today is not identical, but it is instructive. Whenever productivity becomes the primary measure of worth, we drift toward a similar logic. We may be free in name, but we begin to live as though our value must be earned again and again… brick by brick.

Purpose grows when work is placed within a larger story that recognizes human limits, honors rest, and affirms worth that precedes achievement. It grows when we remember that our value is not exhausted by what we produce, and that our lives carry meaning even when output slows.

The invitation here is not to abandon work, but to reframe it.

To ask not only “What am I accomplishing?” but “What is this way of working doing to me?”
To notice where productivity has quietly become a measure of worth and where it might need to be gently released from that role.

So as you move through this week, consider sitting with this question:

When productivity slows, what remains true about my worth?

Purpose does not disappear when output decreases but our ability to see it might. And recovering that vision may be one of the most important forms of formation we can practice.