Most Productivity Advice Was Never Meant for Women Like Us

Once upon a time, I probably would have nodded along with a lot of popular productivity advice.

Work harder.
Stay focused.
Push through.

And honestly, I probably believed it for a long time.

Then my health issues showed up. Chronic pain in particular.

And when that happens, something becomes very clear very quickly.

Your body does not care about motivational quotes.

It doesn’t care about someone’s perfectly optimized morning routine.
It definitely doesn’t care about productivity experts who have never had to negotiate with their joints before getting out of bed.

Suddenly the rules change.

Movement doesn’t just happen anymore. It takes a little patience.

So my mornings start gently.

I get dressed.
I grab a cup of decaf coffee.
And I ease myself into the day instead of charging into it like a bull spotting a red cape.

Ironically, once my body gets going, mornings are often my most productive time. That productivity comes from working with my body instead of trying to overpower it.

I also started noticing something else.

Most productivity advice assumes a life that looks nothing like mine.

Or most women’s, for that matter.

The Toxic Productivity Advice That Pretends Our Lives Don’t Exist

Most productivity advice assumes a very specific kind of life.

• A body without chronic pain.
• A schedule without caregiving responsibilities.
• A home where someone else is quietly handling the invisible labor of daily life.

In other words, a life where the only real job is work. That’s not reality for most women.

Midlife women especially, are often juggling several roles at once.

We may be running businesses or holding demanding jobs.
Managing households.
Carrying the mental load of keeping life running.
Many of us are caring for children, aging parents, or both.

And layered into all of that are the physical realities that the popular productivity books rarely acknowledge.

Chronic pain.
Arthritis.
Perimenopause.
Menopause.
Hormonal shifts that scramble sleep, energy, and concentration.

And I know it’s not just women my age dealing with this.

I’m already watching my own daughter, who’s nearing forty, starting to navigate more frequent medical appointments while juggling family responsibilities and everything else life throws at you.

That tells me something important.

This isn’t some rare exception. It’s simply what life looks like for a lot of women.

Yet toxic productivity culture keeps insisting the answer is simple.

Wake up earlier.
Work harder.
Stop making excuses.

As if every body and every life operates exactly the same way.

They don’t.

The System Wasn’t Designed for Us

Modern work structures were designed around men.

The classic forty-hour workweek assumed a worker who could show up every day, at the same time, with consistent energy and minimal interruption from life outside the office.

It also assumed something else.

Someone else was handling everything at home.

Cooking.
Childcare.
Household logistics.
All the invisible tasks that keep life running.

That model worked reasonably well when workplaces were built around men who had stay-at-home spouses managing the rest of life.

But most women never had that setup. And today, almost no one does. Yet the expectations never changed. We’re still expected to function inside a system that assumes endless stamina and very few competing responsibilities.

Which explains why so many women feel like they’re constantly falling behind.

Not because they’re lazy or lack discipline. Because the system they’re trying to operate inside was never designed with their lives in mind.

The Theater of Hustle Culture

A lot of hustle culture isn’t actually about productivity.

It’s about performance.

Posting pictures of 5 AM workouts.
Sharing elaborate morning routines and late night work sessions.
Talking about how little sleep you need.

It creates the illusion that success comes from sheer willpower. But the reality is much messier than that.

Human energy is not a machine.

Bodies change. Health fluctuates.
Life responsibilities evolve.

Pretending otherwise doesn’t make people more productive. It just makes them feel like they’re failing when they can’t keep up.

Working From Home Wasn’t a Trend for Me

Working from home wasn’t something I adopted during the pandemic.

I’ve owned my own business for almost nineteen years.

Long before remote work became trendy, before Zoom meetings and “work from anywhere” headlines, I was already building my career from home. At the time, it wasn’t about health. It was about necessity, independence, and flexibility.

What I didn’t realize back then was how important that decision would become later. Because when my health issues eventually showed up, chronic pain in particular, I was incredibly fortunate.

I was already working in an environment that allowed me to adapt.

I didn’t have to navigate a commute while my joints were screaming at me or beg for permission to adjust my schedule around medical appointments or bad pain days. I didn’t have to sit in an office pretending everything was fine when my body clearly told me otherwise.

The flexibility was already there.

And I think about that a lot.

Because if I were still working in a traditional office job, the physical demands alone would make it incredibly difficult. Commuting, sitting in an environment I can’t control, trying to schedule medical appointments in such a way that it doesn’t require missing work.

That kind of daily strain adds up quickly.

So for me, remote and flexible work isn’t a perk. It’s what makes it possible for me to continue having a career at all.

And I want to say that plainly, because I know I’m not the only one.

A lot of people need flexible work, not because they’re trying to get away with something, but because it’s the only way they can keep showing up and doing good work without sacrificing their health.

What Trusting Your Own Rhythms Actually Looks Like

Trusting your rhythms doesn’t mean giving up, and it doesn’t mean using your health as an excuse to opt out of working.

It looks like something much harder and much more honest.

Learning to read your own body and building your work around what it actually tells you.

For me, that means protecting the hours when my pain is manageable and not infringing on my brain bandwidth.

It means building buffer into my schedule because some days my body simply won’t cooperate, and fighting that reality only makes things worse.

It looks like making peace with a workday that doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

Because what matters is the output, not how perfectly the process fits someone else’s ideal schedule.

It also means learning the difference between productive discomfort, the kind that stretches you, and harmful pushing that borrows from tomorrow to pay for today.

Nobody in a hustle culture masterclass is going to teach you that.

You learn it by listening to yourself.

The problem is that you were handed someone else’s map and told it would lead to your destination.

Work Should Adapt to Humans

This is the shift I believe we need to make.

Work should adapt to humans. Not the other way around.

For decades, the dominant message has been that if work feels impossible, the problem must be you.

You’re not disciplined enough.
You’re not organized enough.
You’re not committed enough.

But for many women in midlife, the issue isn’t effort.

The problem is that the systems we’re expected to function within were never designed with our lives in mind.

And it’s about time we started questioning it and insisting on something that actually works for real people.

A Different Way Forward

If you’ve been feeling exhausted trying to keep up with hustle culture, you’re not alone.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a way of working that actually respects your energy, your health, and your life outside of work.

If this is something you’ve been thinking about lately, you might find my guide Work That Loves You Back helpful. It walks through a different approach to designing work that supports your strengths and your real life instead of constantly fighting against them.

And if conversations like this resonate with you, you’re always welcome to join my Shift Notes newsletter. Each week I share ideas, and honest reflections about building work that actually fits the life you’re living.

Because success shouldn’t require ignoring your humanity or pretending your body doesn’t exist.