7 subtle clues you're not really okay — even if you're getting things done

You know that friend who always seems to have everything together? Calendar color-coded, inbox at zero, every deadline met with time to spare. From the outside, they look like they're crushing it.

But if you look closer, there's something off. Maybe their laugh sounds a little hollow, or they seem to be moving through life like they're underwater.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: productivity can become a very convincing disguise. I learned this the hard way during my years in finance, when I convinced myself that as long as the reports were filed and the numbers added up, I was doing fine.

Spoiler alert, I wasn't.

Our culture celebrates getting things done, often to the point where we mistake busyness for wellness. The signs that something's wrong can be maddeningly subtle, especially when your to-do list would suggest otherwise.

Let's talk about the quiet signals that deserve your attention, even when you're getting everything done.

1. You're moving through your days without really feeling them

Everything gets done, but there's a flatness to it all. You make breakfast, respond to emails, attend meetings, complete projects, but you might as well be watching someone else do these things.

The texture of your life has gone smooth and featureless, like a stone worn down by water.

This emotional muting often creeps in so gradually that you don't notice it happening. One day you realize you can't remember the last time you felt genuinely excited about something, or even genuinely frustrated.

Both the highs and lows have been compressed into a narrow band of "fine."

Psychologists call this anhedonia, the reduced ability to feel pleasure or interest in activities. While it's commonly associated with depression, it can show up even when you're managing to maintain your responsibilities.

Your brain is still running the program of your daily life, but the emotional resonance has been dialed way down.

2. Sleep has become complicated

Your body is exhausted, but your mind won't stop. You finally get into bed after a long day of productivity, and suddenly your brain decides it's time to replay every conversation, review every decision, and rehearse every upcoming challenge. Or maybe you fall asleep fine but wake at 3 a.m. with your thoughts already racing.

The relationship between stress and sleep creates a vicious cycle. Poor sleep makes it harder to regulate emotions and manage stress, which in turn makes sleep more elusive.

Your productivity during the day might remain intact because you're pushing through on adrenaline and caffeine, but you're accumulating a debt that goes beyond just feeling tired.

What makes this particularly sneaky is that you can maintain your output even with terrible sleep, at least for a while. You learn to function in a fog, and because you're still meeting expectations, you tell yourself it's manageable.

But operating on poor sleep is like trying to run a computer with half its RAM.

3. Your emotional bandwidth has narrowed to a sliver

Small things set you off in ways that surprise even you. Someone chews too loudly and you want to scream. A coworker asks a simple question and irritation flashes through you like lightning.

Or perhaps you've gone the other direction, you feel detached and distant, watching your own life from behind a thick pane of glass.

This emotional dysregulation happens when your nervous system has been running hot for too long.

According to research on chronic stress, prolonged activation of your stress response system alters how your brain processes emotional information. The prefrontal cortex gets overwhelmed while your amygdala becomes hyperactive, treating minor annoyances as legitimate threats.

The tricky part is that these emotional shifts often don't interfere with your ability to perform tasks. You might be snapping at your partner over dishes while still delivering a flawless presentation at work.

But as Rudá Iandê writes in his book "Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life," "Our emotions are not some kind of extraneous or unnecessary appendage to our lives, but rather an integral part of who we are and how we make sense of the world around us."

When they're consistently off-kilter, that's information worth paying attention to.

4. Everything outside of work or obligations has disappeared

When's the last time you did something simply because it sounded fun?

Your calendar is full, but it's all responsibilities, tasks, and obligations.

Social invitations feel like one more thing to manage rather than opportunities for connection. Hobbies that used to bring you joy are gathering dust, literally or figuratively.

This gradual withdrawal from life outside of productivity serves a purpose, even if it's a counterproductive one. When you're struggling internally, narrowing your focus to what's required feels safer than engaging with activities that demand presence and vulnerability.

Tasks have clear endpoints and measures of success. Relationships and hobbies are messier, more open-ended, harder to control.

Social connection, leisure activities, and pursuits done purely for enjoyment are essential for psychological health. They're part of what keeps your system balanced, yet they're often the first things to go when you're barely holding it together.

5. Your body keeps trying to tell you something

Tension headaches that won't quit. A stomach that's always slightly upset. Shoulders that live somewhere up near your ears.

You're getting sick more often, catching every cold that circulates through your office. Or maybe it's back pain, jaw pain from grinding your teeth, or a general sense of physical heaviness.

The body keeps the score, as trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk famously put it. When your mind is determined to keep pushing forward, your body will often be the one waving red flags.

Physical symptoms are your nervous system's way of saying that something needs attention. These symptoms are easy to dismiss because they're rarely severe enough to stop you completely.

You pop some ibuprofen, push through the discomfort, and keep moving. Medical tests often come back normal, which can make you feel like you're imagining things.

But the absence of a diagnosable illness doesn't mean your body isn't struggling with the chronic activation of your stress response.

6. You need more and more to keep going or wind down

That second cup of coffee has become a third and fourth. Wine in the evening has shifted from occasional to nightly.

You find yourself scrolling social media for hours because it's the only way to shut your brain off. Maybe it's online shopping, or binge-watching shows you won't remember, or anything else that helps you either push through or check out.

These coping mechanisms emerge because you need something to manage what you're feeling, or to avoid feeling it altogether. They work, temporarily.

The problem is that you need these tools more and more to achieve the same effect, and they're addressing symptoms rather than causes.

When our internal resources are depleted, we turn to external sources of regulation. We reach for things that change how we feel quickly because we don't have the capacity for the slower, deeper work of actually addressing what's wrong.

7. The idea of stopping feels dangerous

Here's a question: what would happen if you actually paused? If you took a real break, not a working vacation or a weekend spent catching up on life admin, but actual rest.

Does the thought make you anxious? Does it feel impossible to even imagine?

When staying busy becomes your primary strategy for avoiding difficult feelings or facing uncomfortable truths, stopping feels like a threat.

The momentum itself becomes protective. As long as you're moving, you don't have to sit with whatever's underneath all that activity.

Truth is, growth requires rest as much as it requires effort. That goes for everything on this earth, every living thing. But we've convinced ourselves we're somehow exempt from this basic principle.

We're not. You're not. And if the thought of stopping makes your chest tight with anxiety, that's probably the clearest sign that you need to.

Getting things done is good. Being productive has value. But when productivity becomes the only measure of your wellbeing, when it's the last thing standing between you and some feeling you're afraid to feel, it stops being healthy.

These subtle signals matter. They're your whole self trying to get your attention before you're forced to give it.