What If I Never Stop Chasing? The Lie That Doing More Will Make Me Feel Whole 

By Priyanka Joshi, Student, Banasthali Vidyapith

I’m going to turn 21 in less than 5 weeks. I remember being seven, buzzing through July like an overcharged atom. At some point, though, they turned into ticking time bombs. 

Each one a funeral for a version of me I never became. 

And somewhere along the way, I started measuring years by productivity reports instead of pulse points. That voice in my head doesn’t ask ‘Who are you?’ anymore—it demands ‘What have you done?’ as if personhood is just a stack of certificates waiting to be laminated, another Infinity Stone to snap into the gauntlet of never-enough. 

Newsflash: Thanos had all six stones and still lost. (Turns out cosmic power can’t fix an existential crisis. Who knew?) 

Productivity as Proxy: Why We Confuse Doing With Being 

Sorry, I lost my way. Could you point me to the finish line? 

Oh. 

You don’t know where it is either? So we just… what? Sprint in circles until we hallucinate a ribbon in the distance? Until our knees give out and we mistake collapse for arrival? Lovely. 

Take a look around. Eight out of ten people you meet are chasing some invisible trophy—PhDs, dream jobs, six-packs, side hustles, spiritual enlightenment via overpriced journaling kits. 

Will it make them feel whole? Probably not. 

Will that stop them? Don’t be naive. 

Now, some of my fellow cynics will call this hustle culture gone rogue. Tempting. But no, it runs deeper than that. 

So why are we all terminally unsatisfied? Sure, you can blame capitalism (and honestly, fair). But psychology might just be spilling hotter tea.

Let me break it down without putting you to sleep. Back in 1987, a guy named Edward Higgins proposed the Self-Discrepancy Theory. According to him, we’re constantly torn between three versions of ourselves: 

● The actual self (who you are) 

● The ideal self (who you dream of being) 

● And the ought self (who you think you should be) 

And when there’s a gap between who we are and who we think we should be (and there always is), we don’t calmly work toward balance. No, we spiral. We grind harder, attach our worth to output, and chase gold stars like lab rats in an anxious maze. 

We are motivated to reduce discrepancies to alleviate the associated emotional discomfort. Makes sense, right? I would choose working an 18 hour shift over feeling like a failure any day. 

So let’s pull up a chair and ask the only question that truly matters: 

Who made you believe you had to earn your place in the world? 

Because the Overachiever Complex isn’t just about ambition, it’s about survival. Psychological survival. 

Why the Gap Hurts So Much: The Psychology Beneath the Self-Discrepancy 

We are not born with an ideal self or with a sense of who we ought to be. Let’s just agree on that. 

I’ve never seen a toddler spiral into existential dread because their crayon squiggle didn’t live up to their five-year plan. 

No child screams, “But mom, this is not who I want to be.” 

But somewhere between crayons and college applications, we internalize a new language: one of ‘shoulds,’ ‘not enoughs,’ and silent alarms. Higgins gave it a name—Self-Discrepancy—but he didn’t invent the wound. He just mapped it. 

The size of the chasm depends on what filled it before the emptiness: 

● The way you were taught to fear mediocrity more than burnout. 

● The silence you learned to mistake for peace. 

● The unspoken curriculum that said worth is a debt paid in productivity.

Let me walk you through some other psychological theories that explain this behaviour. 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect (1999) 

The less competent we are, the more we overestimate our abilities. But reverse this for self-worth: the more we achieve, the more we underestimate our deservingness. Hence why Nobel laureates still feel like imposters while mediocre white men demand raises. 

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) 

We don’t measure ourselves against who we are—we measure against who we see. Instagram isn’t inspiration; it’s a highlight reel weaponized against your self-worth. 

The Overjustification Effect (Deci, 1971) 

When extrinsic rewards (money, grades, likes) replace intrinsic joy, we lose the plot. Remember drawing for fun? Now your art isn’t valid until it gets 10K likes. Congratulations—you’ve been psychologically hacked. 

Learned Industriousness (Eisenberger, 1992) 

You were conditioned like a lab rat—but instead of cheese pellets, the reward was love. Every gold star in childhood trained you: effort = value. Now, even your hobbies have KPIs. 

So if you’ve been wondering why rest feels like failure and success feels like a scam—congrats. You’re fluent in a language you never asked to learn. 

The Way Out (Because You’ll Ask) 

Let me be clear: I’m writing this from deep inside the belly of the beast. My to-do list currently has a to-do list. But here’s what I’ve learned while slowly chewing through my own restraints: 

BECOME A “SHOULD” DETECTIVE 

Every time you hear “I should…” in your head: 

Trace the blueprint: “Who installed this programming? A parent? A boss? A culture that profits from my insecurity?” 

The litmus test: “Would I say this to someone I love?” (We’re infinitely kinder to others than ourselves.) 

Case file: Last week I caught myself thinking “I should wake up earlier to be more productive.” Then remembered: I’m not a 19th century farmer. The industrial revolution happened. We have electricity now.

PRACTICE SACRED USELESSNESS 

Rebel against the cult of productivity by: 

● Doing something that can’t be turned into content, a side hustle, or personal growth 

● Staring at walls like a medieval mystic 

● Being intentionally bad at something (I paint like a drunk toddler and it’s glorious) 

Warning: At first this will feel like “wasting time.” That’s the capitalism talking. 

HOLD FUNERALS FOR FANTASY SELVES 

That version of you who: 

● Runs marathons before breakfast 

● Speaks 5 languages 

● Has a skincare routine involving 12 steps 

Let. Them. Go. No eulogy required. 

Recent burial: My imaginary TED-Talk-giving alter ego. Turns out I hate public speaking. 

FIND THE LADDER-JUMPERS 

Surround yourself with people who: 

● Genuinely don’t care about “hustle” 

● Laugh when you say you’re “behind in life” 

● Model how to exist without constant self-optimization 

My patron saint: My uncle who retired to move back home for a quiet life and says “No one ever wished they’d attended more meetings” like it’s a holy mantra. 

Don’t get me wrong—I’m still very much a victim of this capitalist machinery, or a slave to my own psyche, depending on who’s getting the blame that day. 

But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way: the gap never closes through achievement. It only starts to close when you stop measuring. 

If you only take one thing from this entire spiral of a piece, let it be this: No one dies wishing they’d optimized more. But a hell of a lot die wishing they’d just lived. 

(Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stare at some clouds. Unproductively. On purpose.) 

P.S. Got thoughts, strong feelings, or a well-worded existential crisis to share? You can reach me at priyankajoshi0042@gmail.com, I promise I’ll read it while pretending to journal.

P.P.S. I don’t journal. 🙂