Motivation

It's a tough topic because everyone has a different perception and it's hard to share emotions but I feel what I call motivation really has an impact on me. Sometimes is a silent impact, I'm talking now about lack ok motivation, noticeable only when it comes back.
You don't know what you don't know. You don't know how much energy and willingness to do things you should have if you never realized it.

My biggest adulthood lack of motivation came from jobs. I can't complain, I work in software/Machine learning, good salaries, remote work if desired, etc, but still, a day to day that is not fulfilling has devastating effects. Even more, probably fully remote work post pandemic plays a role in this despite I think the net effect is positive as I can't value enough the commute time regained.

The difference between being motivated to do something and being indifferent is the largest gap possible. If you truly desire something and work for it the odds of succeding increase exponentially.

Things I've realized that affect my motivation:

• Sleep. I have regular issues sleeping. Usually after 2 days of bad sleep my brain doesn't work anymore. I work poorly, I get anxious because I can't get anything done nor I can think properly. I sleep bad again and so on. Disaster.
• Anxiety. It's related to sleep but not always. Feeling I can't do something or that I don't understand some topic or how to solve a problem, makes me anxious and after a while I want to quit. I trust I can understand or solve complex machine learning topics but usually not having a clear North is really stressful. If only I could have someone guiding a bit, everything looks better. Not knowing if you are on the right path and you have a short time to figure out something is horrible. For instance, we need to solve X problem. You ask a few days for research, you accumulate papers or blogposts, but sometimes none is exactly your solution, and then all have something different, and then you don't know what to read and all are long pieces of text, and they mention other topics you don't know. I feel anxious just by writing this, but one needs to make peace with the fact that you can't have a phD in every topic to solve. Maybe in none if you are just in industry and you are responsible for multiple projects, and things will be done suboptimally probably. But it's hard to really accept it and on top of that, is you have a boss or some coleague asking for this, the stress is twice as big, at least for me. Fear of disappointing. Maybe that's another whole note.
• Daily meetings. Daily standup or just status meetings are terrible for me. I feel the pressure to explain myself every day, to tell someone else what did I do for 8 hours and sometimes, when motivations it's at a low level, is not that much, or maybe I am just researching without having grasped full understanding so it seems unfruitful, and this goes back to anxiety. Every day feeling the need to have something meaningful to share. Currently I don't have daily meetings, I have some freedom to work and then put up to speed my manager. I feel more free and funny enough, I feel that I do more progress on a daily basis this way.
• Social media. You can see unrealistic success stories all day long that feel like someone found the way to live in a 5 minute revelation and minimum effort. All fake, all lies but you can quickly fall in that trap of feeling less than others. You just have to compare yourself with previous you, not others that are even probably fake. On top of that, when you realize all the time you get back you feel like your days are longer and you can fight the anxiety better. At some point I realized this and when I automatically reached my phone, which happened really often, to open Twitter, I would hit my wrist (without hurting!) and took a deep breath, then drop the phone. You get back 5/10 minutes of time you would use in social media, and that accumulates fast.

I've quit because of this, because of not being happy, because of being stressed every morning by lack of progress. Maybe I wasn't up to the task, maybe if you know exactly what you are doing you can move forward steadily without worrynig about this but I'm sure there was another time in a project where I felt all this lack of motivation and it was not because of "skill issue" but because of continuous urgency. Every morning I could (or maybe not, you don't know until you check your phone) with some urgent message of modifying something because yadda yadda the client. Sometimes it made sense, others.. not so much, and that feeling of being alert and thinking about slack messages all the time was awful, you can't focus, you can't feel you are working in peace in something.

Consequence

Eventually I quit all that and started learning about how to set up a job board, reading , drinking coffee, I took a 6 month sabbatical, at least, industry sabbatical, but I would spend time in the computer learning, working in the job board, etc. But I was free and owner of my own time, no one expecting anything. If I wanted to do nothing and just play with my dog all afternoon, there was no daily standup the next morning to dread. I could enjoy things without worrying.

Unfortunately in those six months I didn't make a fortune nor won the jackpot so I went back to industry but without ruhsing. I looked for jobs that at least, before joining, made me want to join. Maybe because of the area, maybe because of the technology and in some case, maybe because it seemed chill. I had my share of rejections and processes that went nowhere but I ended up in a startup with a really enjoyable day to day structure. I'm really grateful about it, I have a couple of meetings per weeks and that's it. I can do things at my own pace (given some realistic timelines), I can share ideas with my manager but I don't need to impress anyone on a daily basis. You could think that I'm chilling but not, I work hard, I learn a lot of stuff and I put the best of me because I feel comfortable and grateful to how my manager handles the startup.

Conclusions

• Fix your sleep. Try everything and don't give up for too much time. You can try:
  • Magnesium
  • Having dinner earlier
  • Start relaxing one hour before (lights down, no screens, reading a bit, etc). This is the most unrealistic for me, can be done once, not regularly if you are anxious.
  • Drink some relaxing tea.
  • Legal drugs (alprazolam or similar, check with doctor.)
  • Nose strips
  • Meditate

You need to find what's the main cause but if it's only "being anxious", start trying stuff, at least you will feel doing something about it.

• If you can afford it, change your job, take a sabbatical, take some time and look for what you really want.