Ennui

[distressed_romeo]

This is kinda related to health...

Do you ever have phases where it's impossible to motivate yourself to do anything, and as you go to bed you realise you've wasted a whole day? The thing that winds me up is that I know plenty of things I can do to fix myself, but it just never seems to happen.

Discuss.

 

[Black Watch]

Yes indeed! Allow me to suggest what I call "distraction therapy". Frequently these periods of getting stuck occur because maybe you have a whole bunch of things you "should" be doing because they are important. But for some reason you just cannot bring yourself to do them. I get this too. So I distract myself, it does not always work, but here is how I do it.

I pick something wacky and somewhat frivolous, typically not related at all to the things I need to do. Then go do some small project un-related, and you may find that your block is cleared, and you are eager and ready to focus on the task at hand.

For example I might have a huge code deadline, but for some reason cannot get it in gear. So in this example, I go to the beach with a bunch of gear and spend a few hours to a whole day creating a sand fortress or some other strange thing. I find after I do this I am usually much more revved up and ready to go.

Painting / going out to the desert and setting off explosives, planting a few trees - all of these have worked for me as well. Distract yourself from the overwhelming task for a bit and you will probably find your motivation return.

 

[distressed_romeo]

I'll give it a go. Cheers.

 

[Durero]

Do you ever have phases where it's impossible to motivate yourself to do anything, and as you go to bed you realise you've wasted a whole day? The thing that winds me up is that I know plenty of things I can do to fix myself, but it just never seems to happen.

I feel like this problem has been a difficult one for me for most of my adult life. A meditation course I took years ago has proven to be the most helpful and effective thing I've tried. Taking an hour to just sit and meditate not only helps me get 'unstuck', but also has helped me move away from my old habit of really getting down on myself whenever I don't achieve all the things I wanted to during the day.

The meditation course I took was from this organization:
http://www.dhamma.org/

The first time I took the course it felt like going to boot camp for the mind - one of the hardest things I've ever tried, and definitely one of the most worthwhile.

 

[Mastodon]

All the freakin time.