burning out
welcome back to the blog! here's some thought inspo for the week that was marinating in my mind :)
'burnout is everywhere'
I quote the American Psychological Association. With 'burnout' labelled as the problem, we attempt to prevent it through self-care practices, less stress, more rest.
Yet I get this feeling that we might be missing the bigger picture. So focused on burnout, we forget that society's perspective on productivity (always on the grind, locked in etc. etc.) may be the true culprit.
the motivated mentality
What do the statements; ‘I don’t feel motivated enough’, ‘I’m too lazy’, ‘I need to be more motivated’ all have in common? They all imply that the only way to get things done is to have more motivation.
While motivation does play a large role in how eagerly we will complete a difficult task, a common pitfall is to believe that motivation is the sole driver of productivity. It leads to disempowering thoughts -> some people are just more motivated than others, I'm either motivated or I'm not.
We think successful people must be highly motivated all the time. The opposite is true. 'Unmotivated' people are viewed as lazy, unsuccessful, couch potatoes. And so we place the impossible expectation of being motivated 24/7 to be productive/successful onto ourselves. And what do impossible expectations have in common? They're all short-lived.
forcing ourselves to be more motivated
We often resort to the old 'carrot and the stick' to increase motivation; whether that's a treat for studying longer, or some sort of punishment for not. We temporarily alter our motivation levels in our favour to make the task more enticing or to make not doing the task become more unpleasant than doing the task.
But as exposure to reward/punishment increases, we become desensitised to their effects, requiring the reward to grow or the punishment to become more severe. It’s simply not sustainable. Even procrastination is a carrot and stick method. Procrastinating brings temporary pleasure but when doing the task becomes less painful then continuing to procrastinate, we feel more motivated to do it. And here, people ask why they can’t stop procrastinating? Because it’s the tried way of becoming motivated to do tasks, even if at the very last minute. To not procrastinate is to run the risk of not completing the task. Hard-wired for survival, we’re much better cognitively at handling crises than planning long-term. In some ways, procrastination allows us to fall on this built-in crisis management system...even if it induces high stress levels every single time.
a reframe on motivation
But maybe, just maybe, our motivation levels are supposed to fluctuate. Just like restaurants have busy and quiet periods, so do we. In the busy periods, restaurants are at maximum productivity, delivering orders left and right. In quiet periods, what happens? Staff are more idle, the restaurant is cleaned and prepared for the next busy period.
Rather than trying to ‘fix’ our motivation levels, and force ourselves to be highly motivated all the time, maybe it’s better to work with our motivation levels. We need periods of low motivation in order to rest, recuperate. If we enforce high motivation levels when we really need low motivation, burnout occurs more quickly and we feel so deprived of being ‘lazy’ that we crave it so much and we identify with it.
an example:
If someone forces themselves to study for 3 hours straight even when they start to feel a little fatigued, they moment they get rest, they’re going to feel so deprived of rest that they overdo it and feel ‘too lazy’ to study again. And they're left with the disempowering view of themselves as naturally 'lazy', destined for the couch potato pathway.
successful people aren't always motivated
We incorrectly believe that more motivated people are more successful. All the most successful people have fluctuating motivation. So what is the real distinguishing factor? Maybe it’s about not feeling as guilty when you feel less motivated and seeing it as a natural cycle of motivation. Maybe it’s about acknowledging that you’re productive and completing tasks you promised to do when you do feel motivated. Maybe it’s about planning to do the more cognitively taxxing tasks in parts of the day where you feel more motivated and to do more habitual tasks in parts of the day where low motivation kicks in.
Again, we incorrectly believe that lack of motivation is ‘laziness’ and embodying this state means embodying the couch potato. Laziness is associated with a lot of negatively viewed characteristics - failure, gluttony, inactivity. But it is ‘laziness’ that pushes us towards efficiency, it is ‘laziness’ that helps us figure out strategies to work smarter and not harder. I think it’s time to break the belief that low motivation means you won’t be successful. While high motivation helps us to do difficult tasks, low motivation is what drives us to make those difficult tasks habitual, even easy. And being able to difficult tasks with ease and mastery is what makes people successful.
perspective shift
Asking the wrong question leads to the wrong answers. We often ask ‘why can’t I stay motivated? how do I stay motivated’ and the answers we get are temporary solutions, strategies to extend motivation superficially only leading to a more extreme drop in motivation levels soon after.
We’re not actually interested in staying motivated, we’re interested in staying committed to something. How do we stay committed, continue doing a task even when we don’t feel motivated? That’s the key question. When we feel unmotivated, what do we do?
Maybe that means making it more habitual (taking less effort, becoming automatic). Maybe it means doing the easier tasks that still contribute to the same goal. Maybe it means resting and taking advantage of periods where you feel highly motivated.
from,
the heart <3
