When is it productive to be angry and when is it not?

Question

the word productivemaybe was not the best choice for this section. How about if it was changed to the word "useful"?

Answer 1

I find it very annoying when people think anger is always a bad, negative, destructive emotion. This is not true.

Sometimes, anger can motivate a person to take action and make changes in his life. On a wider scale, say the societal level, I am sure anger is responsible for many good, progressive changes that make the world a better place to live in. But first we had to get angry and say I am not going to take it anymore and I am going to do something about it.

I suppose anger can be counterproductive if you lose control and do not do anything with the emotion except to release it.

Answer 2

it's never really PRODUCTIVE to be angry because when you think about it, do you ever actually get anything done when you're angry? But you get angry because something is wrong, and you need to fix it. Just like stress, it's a survival thing, and just like stress and any other negative emotion, if you feel so much of it that that's all that's on your mind and you can't think about anything else, then it's not productive.

It's... helpful (note: not exactly productive) when you know what's making you angry and fix it so that you're not angry anymore. But if you're too angry to even speak or think, then it's obviously not very productive.

Answer 3

It is productive to be angry when you finally make the changes necessary to get where you need to be so you can move on. Not productive when you get angry enough to destroy everything in your path then discover the next day the same problem is still there to deal with.

Answer 4

It's pretty much never productive to you angry. You can achieve much more with a calm mind.