Help! I Keep Losing My Motivation To Work

00:00:00.000 | All right, what do we got for question number two?

00:00:02.920 | All right, next question is from Avi.

00:00:05.880 | Some weeks I'm very motivated to do work and I feel so good.

00:00:08.840 | On others, I just don't feel like it.

00:00:10.640 | This leads to negative emotions and I completely lose the motivation to do work and indulge

00:00:14.600 | in pointless social media.

00:00:15.920 | Do you have some advice on how I can keep doing the good work every day in slow but

00:00:20.640 | steady manner?

00:00:22.040 | Well, this is another prime example of why just focusing on productivity is not in itself

00:00:29.640 | a sustainable strategy.

00:00:31.320 | So if all you're working on is I'm doing the right organizational things, I have my multi-scale

00:00:38.600 | plan, I'm time blocking every day, strategic to weekly to daily, you could be doing all

00:00:43.640 | the things, have all the tools, have all the rules.

00:00:48.160 | That alone is not going to make you fulfilled and feel like you're accomplishing things

00:00:51.960 | and being excited about work every day.

00:00:53.720 | That's what's happening with Avi here.

00:00:56.040 | His extended answer or his extended version of the question, he talked about, "Hey, I

00:00:59.400 | do all your things, all your productivity things."

00:01:03.280 | But he still will just fall out of like, "I don't really want to work on this," and lose

00:01:07.480 | whole weeks in the spirals of self-doubt as he spends more and more time on social media,

00:01:11.960 | et cetera.

00:01:13.120 | So again, this is the sort of necessary but not sufficient precondition type situation.

00:01:18.120 | Productivity, these tactics are going to really be a nice precondition for a sustainable,

00:01:24.560 | accomplished deep life, but they're not sufficient on their own.

00:01:27.840 | So Avi, let's try to go forward and fix your problem here.

00:01:31.280 | I think the issue is either your mind doesn't trust your plan or your mind doesn't like

00:01:34.640 | your plan.

00:01:35.640 | I mean, this is what causes people to just stop working and get lost for three days on

00:01:41.920 | social media.

00:01:42.920 | Either the thing you're working on, your mind says, "This is not going to work.

00:01:49.240 | We're spending all this time on whatever, like our influencer YouTube channel, and it's

00:01:52.720 | not good.

00:01:53.720 | And we're not going to become famous, and it's not going to pay our bill, or we're writing

00:01:56.840 | this novel, or there's business ideas.

00:01:58.240 | I don't even know what this is.

00:01:59.360 | We're just jumping on calls all the time, and it's like a simulacrum of business.

00:02:03.960 | We're not actually doing something or producing something."

00:02:06.240 | So your mind might say, "This work, I'm not going to do it.

00:02:09.720 | This isn't going to lead us anywhere."

00:02:10.800 | You know that.

00:02:11.800 | You're just spinning your wheels in a highly performative way.

00:02:14.840 | Or your mind says, "Okay, maybe this will work.

00:02:16.560 | I just don't like the plan.

00:02:20.280 | What we're working on, what this job is, is grinding and boring or against my values.

00:02:24.760 | I just don't want to do it."

00:02:26.340 | So it is your mind against whatever plan your productivity system is saying it should be

00:02:31.440 | doing.

00:02:33.320 | So if we're going to fix that, there's two things we can do.

00:02:36.200 | The first thing we want to do, of course, is focus on the craft portion, the craft bucket,

00:02:41.960 | and your overall deep life buckets.

00:02:44.800 | That requires some work here.

00:02:46.680 | It requires some work to think through, "What am I working on and why?

00:02:51.360 | What are the projects I'm taking on?

00:02:52.720 | What is my workload?

00:02:54.480 | Is there something in here I just really hate?

00:02:56.520 | How do I re-engineer around that?

00:02:57.920 | Is there something in here I think is really important?

00:02:59.480 | All right, so how am I going to do that work?"

00:03:02.360 | Let's start thinking that through.

00:03:03.360 | Let's not be so haphazard and just see if we're in the mood for it and what our mind

00:03:06.800 | says.

00:03:07.800 | Let's take that a little bit out of the picture, like we talked about with Andy in the first

00:03:11.000 | question.

00:03:12.000 | Maybe we'll set up a location for this work and it's different than what we do that.

00:03:14.440 | Maybe my workload is out of whack.

00:03:16.040 | I need to take things off of my plate.

00:03:17.800 | Maybe I need to more radically shift what I'm doing, but we want to get the craft bucket

00:03:21.040 | in order.

00:03:22.120 | So you've got to know what you're working on, why you're working on, how you're working

00:03:24.880 | on it.

00:03:25.880 | You want all of those pieces to come together.

00:03:27.480 | And that might take you about six weeks of really thinking and tinkering and trying to

00:03:32.400 | optimize that part of your life.

00:03:35.640 | The second key then, maybe a little bit more surprising, is looking at the other buckets

00:03:40.600 | of your life after that as well.

00:03:42.200 | The other areas that make a deep life deep and start systematically getting your house

00:03:46.640 | in order in each of those other areas as well.

00:03:49.200 | Constitution, your health, community, how you're serving or leading on behalf of others

00:03:53.060 | that are important to you.

00:03:55.200 | Contemplation, how you're making ethical, philosophical, and theological concerns, something

00:03:59.140 | that you're engaged with and at the core about how you structure and live your life.

00:04:03.040 | You get these houses in order.

00:04:06.160 | And even then, when you're in a hard part or a hard phase in work, you're much less

00:04:11.080 | likely to fall into, let's go on YouTube all day.

00:04:15.420 | Let's go on TikTok all day.

00:04:17.240 | That spiral of activity, the self-recrimination that comes out of the spiral of self-recrimination

00:04:21.880 | that comes out of you falling deeper into activities that you know are ultimately shallow

00:04:25.360 | and not useful to you or your vision on earth.

00:04:28.120 | When you have the other buckets tuned up, even when work is hard, they're going to support

00:04:33.320 | you.

00:04:34.640 | Even when, okay, I have this whatever, I'm in year four of med school, my residency,

00:04:40.560 | and I think this is important, but it's just so hard and it's exhausting.

00:04:44.920 | They support you.

00:04:46.600 | And you say, I want to lead other people.

00:04:48.320 | I want to be, I'm exercising, I'm outside, I have the celebration bucket, I have this

00:04:54.200 | hobby, I'm really into film.

00:04:56.840 | I have these other things that are more meaningful and quality, and they're there to fill my

00:05:00.160 | time.

00:05:01.160 | And even if I have to take a break from work for a few days, what I'm going into is something

00:05:04.000 | else that's important, something else that I think is useful.

00:05:06.960 | So these are the two aspects of what's pushing to the spiral.

00:05:10.320 | One is that your relationship to work itself needs some work.

00:05:13.480 | The craft bucket has to be overhauled.

00:05:15.200 | But the second piece is you don't have other options for when work is getting you down.

00:05:21.480 | So it's, I'm being pushed towards, I need a break and I have nothing else quality to

00:05:25.320 | do with that break.

00:05:27.000 | So I end up on TikTok looking at ASMR videos, which I think is what people do on TikTok.

00:05:36.600 | So those are your two options.

00:05:38.360 | So you got to get the whole deep life in order and it's not going to get rid of hard things.

00:05:42.680 | It's not going to make your job feel good every day.

00:05:44.400 | It's not going to solve all your problems, but I think that's what's going to be your

00:05:46.880 | best bet for getting out of this cycle of self-doubt and self-recrimination.

00:05:52.640 | [Music]

Help! I Keep Losing My Motivation To Work

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