Comment by NalNezumi

Because in our modern world, productivity is virtue. And if you want to live a virtuous life(= better self image, self actualization), you need to live a productive life.

That's what the modern culture have told you.

It wasn't always this way, but at some point, increase in productivity stopped being the burden of the system and shifted to burden of the individual.

Henry Ford or early factories didn't tell "each worker to be more productive", it looked at how the production system could be made more productive. At some point, this was offloaded to the individual. (it did both in reality)

But if you determine your self worth by how much you get done, you will forever feel worthless.

Maybe this can make you think it from another angle: Productivity rips you apart https://youtu.be/VQK64SrYkzs?feature=shared

For me it helped when I consciously trained to shift my attention from "how much I've done = how much left I need to do and/or compared to others" to "how much I've done = how much I've done compared to previous me (checkpoint towards the past) and if the trendline is upward OR I'm actually enjoying the process". In practice this meant that every time anxiety creeps in, at the spot (this is important), I "pause", and try to consciously steer my anxious thought patterns to one that evaluate my done/productivity the other way.