What to do when you have no motivation
Sep. 5th, 2024 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerElsewhere a friend asks what people's strategies are for zero motivation days, and I felt motivated enough by this to write down a few things:
First, the reason for you having a zero-motivation day is important. If it's because you've had no sleep, you've just been dumped, you're ill, or you are having some other external issue then it's worth just generally downgrading your expectations of yourself. You're not going to be massively productive and there's no shortcut to squeezing extra effort out of you when you're just not with it. You can probably do *something*, but taking the pressure off to do *everything* will probably actually help you do more than you otherwise would.
Second, is the issue that you have too many things to do? If the issue is that anything you might do means you're not doing something else that's also really important? In that case write down all of your priorities, and see if you can work out what the top priority is, and go see if you can at least push that one forward a tiny bit. If I'm getting something done then I'm more likely to stop worrying that I'm failing to achieve anything, and that lowers my stress levels, and makes it easier to do the next thing. If you can't work out what the top priority is then go talk to the person who sets your priorities and ask them what to do first. If you feel you can't do that (because you're so far behind that the conversation will stress you out) then talk to someone else, or failing that flip a coin. The important thing is to achieve even a tiny bit, and get some forward momentum, so your to-do list is going down rather than up and you feel less overwhelmed by it.
Third, is the issue that you don't feel like you know how to carry the task out? If you're circling a task warily, refusing to engage with it, constantly gathering information because you don't feel equipped to carry it out, then start by writing it down, and then breaking it into parts, and then breaking those parts into smaller parts, until you end up either with a part that you don't understand well enough to split down further, or you've broken it down into small enough pieces that you realise that you *do* know how to do it after all. If you've hit a dead end with parts of it, can you do some other parts, so that you can go talk to someone and say "I've done A and C, but I need a hand working out how to do B." - you'll feel much better about that conversation if you've already solved parts of it, and you're not going in feeling completely incompetent. But bear in mind that sometimes you *will* be completely imcompetent (because it's a new job/task) and that's okay - provided your bosses/co-workers aren't complete idiots they will expect to show you how to do things you've never done before.
Once you've got reasonable expectations of yourself, a priority, and a bunch of small, achievable sub-tasks to work on then start sneaking your way in to them. Do the smallest bit possible. Open the document, then go make a cup of tea. Read the first paragraph and then read something you like for five minutes. The thing you're trying to do here is give yourself a bit of momentum and reassure your stressed inner-self that nothing awful will happen if you engage with the task.
Things that have been known to help me:
Talking the problem over with a colleague/friend/rubber duck.
Doing something entirely unrelated for 5 minutes that gives you a sense of achievement.
A cup of tea.
Pomodoro Technique (You have to do nothing but the task for X minutes, and then you get to take a break).
Please bear in mind that these are all things that have helped *me*. If there are things that have helped you then please comment with them!
First, the reason for you having a zero-motivation day is important. If it's because you've had no sleep, you've just been dumped, you're ill, or you are having some other external issue then it's worth just generally downgrading your expectations of yourself. You're not going to be massively productive and there's no shortcut to squeezing extra effort out of you when you're just not with it. You can probably do *something*, but taking the pressure off to do *everything* will probably actually help you do more than you otherwise would.
Second, is the issue that you have too many things to do? If the issue is that anything you might do means you're not doing something else that's also really important? In that case write down all of your priorities, and see if you can work out what the top priority is, and go see if you can at least push that one forward a tiny bit. If I'm getting something done then I'm more likely to stop worrying that I'm failing to achieve anything, and that lowers my stress levels, and makes it easier to do the next thing. If you can't work out what the top priority is then go talk to the person who sets your priorities and ask them what to do first. If you feel you can't do that (because you're so far behind that the conversation will stress you out) then talk to someone else, or failing that flip a coin. The important thing is to achieve even a tiny bit, and get some forward momentum, so your to-do list is going down rather than up and you feel less overwhelmed by it.
Third, is the issue that you don't feel like you know how to carry the task out? If you're circling a task warily, refusing to engage with it, constantly gathering information because you don't feel equipped to carry it out, then start by writing it down, and then breaking it into parts, and then breaking those parts into smaller parts, until you end up either with a part that you don't understand well enough to split down further, or you've broken it down into small enough pieces that you realise that you *do* know how to do it after all. If you've hit a dead end with parts of it, can you do some other parts, so that you can go talk to someone and say "I've done A and C, but I need a hand working out how to do B." - you'll feel much better about that conversation if you've already solved parts of it, and you're not going in feeling completely incompetent. But bear in mind that sometimes you *will* be completely imcompetent (because it's a new job/task) and that's okay - provided your bosses/co-workers aren't complete idiots they will expect to show you how to do things you've never done before.
Once you've got reasonable expectations of yourself, a priority, and a bunch of small, achievable sub-tasks to work on then start sneaking your way in to them. Do the smallest bit possible. Open the document, then go make a cup of tea. Read the first paragraph and then read something you like for five minutes. The thing you're trying to do here is give yourself a bit of momentum and reassure your stressed inner-self that nothing awful will happen if you engage with the task.
Things that have been known to help me:
Talking the problem over with a colleague/friend/rubber duck.
Doing something entirely unrelated for 5 minutes that gives you a sense of achievement.
A cup of tea.
Pomodoro Technique (You have to do nothing but the task for X minutes, and then you get to take a break).
Please bear in mind that these are all things that have helped *me*. If there are things that have helped you then please comment with them!
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Date: 2024-09-05 03:54 pm (UTC)The more general moral I took from this was that tasks requiring very little brain or creativity are a resource. If you have some that aren't too urgent, hoard them until you have a day when you're good for nothing else, and then you haven't wasted that day!
(OK, the other moral I absorbed was "don't let your company fly you to the USA if you can possibly avoid it, it's a horrible experience")
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Date: 2024-09-05 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-09-06 12:24 pm (UTC)(I, too, dislike travel for work.)
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