You’re not lazy, distracted, or tired: you lack passion.
Do things that inspire and engage to regain energy and focus.
I’ve been on a long grind of a project, and I recently tried something new. Instead of rushing to bed or sleeping more to attempt to grab at least 6–7 hours of sleep, I’ll either stay up or wake up early and do something that inspires me. Here’s the trade off, I miss out on some marginal sleep (30 min to an hour), but I’m reinvigorated.
At one of our project’s busiest moments, I found myself lacking concentration and absentmindedly checking social media. I first thought it was a focus problem, so I tried to refresh my morning routine, get more sleep, eat better, and regulate my caffeine.
This helped my focus somewhat but the ennui of trying to be more efficient when my passion was low decreased my motivation and work ethic even more.
The Passion Quota
Lately, it’s dawned on me. We need a certain threshold of rest, nutrients, and relationships to thrive. However, there’s also this subjective passion quota we all have.
We all have limited (some more than others) capacity to do work that doesn’t truly ignite our passions. This capacity is essentially necessary for all jobs. CEOs still have to sift through emails, surgeons still have to update charts and EMR data, and journalists still have review sources and footnotes. There are passionless parts to even the best of jobs.
Essentially, we can’t be too altruistic about work or even life itself. Toil is unavoidable. There will always be a mundane part of your job or daily routine. However, when these passionless parts of the job grow to resemble the majority of the job itself, your passion quota will not be met.
Passionless Ennui
I’ve used the word before: Ennui. I read it in a collection of letters from Seneca on Stoicism. Ennui is defined as, “A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement”. The dissatisfaction and listlessness you feel at work won’t go away with herbal tea and meditation; you have to catalyze your work with passion somewhere.
Rides to the Airport
I’ll provide an example of when this feeling of ennui strikes me on the job. I’m in an Uber on my way to the airport on a Monday morning. I answer some emails and update a few analytical models in the car. I’m now reading and writing in my journal a bit before arriving at the airport. Deep down, I just want the car to continue down the highway and never take the exit for the airport. I just want the Uber ride to continue into infinitude, because deep down, I never want to get out and start my actual work week on the client site. I have a pit in my stomach — dreading a looming late night on Monday and already hopelessly yearning for Friday night. This feeling — this fear — this restless dread: this is passionless ennui.
How do We Regain Passion and Fight Ennui?
We essentially have three options:
- Add — Supplement work with focused pursuits that catalyze your creativity and passions before or after work
- Subtract — Refine your role to minimize work that drains you by shifting roles in the company or adjusting your current role (Stop leading ten internal committees that you don’t need to)
- Re-frame — Don’t change your job — just your perspective. Identify long term goals and skills you desire to develop and connect those goals and skills back to your day to day job to bring passion to even the most mundane of tasks
Add
I’ll be honest; I’m only in my second or third week of this experiment, so I don’t have a thorough sample size, but so far, it has been excellent. Here’s my rough plan. Go to bed right after your hotel evening work ends. Avoid all distractions. Wake up early. Caveat: you need sleep. For me, I know I need at least six hours, and even that is pushing it. Before you go to bed, write down 2–3 things you want to do in the morning hours that will motivate you the rest of the day. This is vital. Otherwise, snoozing is very tempting. No joke, I’m so eager to wake up since I’ve trained myself to do something inspiring and fueling in the morning. It’s simple, but so far, it has been such a rich start to my day
Subtract
For me, I used to lead initiatives that weren’t related to my actual day job as well as do extra side work. I’ve tried to cut out all the business development and initiatives that don’t actually fuel me. One, so I can double down on the work that energize me. Two, so I can have more time to myself in the mornings and on the weekends.
Understand why you are working specific initiatives at work. Understand the root cause. Is it something you need to push through in order to gain an understanding of a critical skill? Is it something you’re doing to get out of your comfort zone? Or, did you just find yourself being volun-told, and you’ve never re-evaluated your time spent on the activity? Take a hard look at your workday and also your entire day and understand what you can cut in order to open up more time to invigorate your passions.
Re-Frame
For example, today, I was criticized about my introductory remarks to a supplier in a simple email. Long story short, I was basically instructed how I should have written an email. It was a bit annoying and pedantic. But, here’s the thing. I get to work with some high performing people that have a knack for everything. I’ve gotten good at the small stuff. Displaying data clearly in graphs and charts, communicating well in clear emails, driving an agenda during a workshop. In the moment, I’ve been fuming about these lessons, but in hindsight, I need to realize the immense amount of training opportunities I’ve been given to work with executives and learn from them.
When you re-frame burnout work with this mindset, it makes it much more bearable. It also develops a stronger sense of humility and gratitude for your work. When there’s a clear north star to your toil, you’re so much more motivated.
Passion: You need it to survive
- Find passion in your life and work.
- As needed: add, subtract, and re-frame to find passion to fuel you throughout the day.
