When Every Day Feels ‘Meh’: Making Sense of Constant Unmotivation

And how to start to regain your momentum

Do you wake up in the morning refreshed? Or do you wake up already feeling defeated by your long to-do list?

If it’s the latter, you’re not alone. Constant headlines reveal that more adults than ever are struggling with mental health issues, feeling exhausted, or are struggling to stay motivated at work. In 2020 a journalist coined a phrase that perfectly sums up these feelings: if you’re “tired of feeling like everything is a disaster,” Monika Bauerlein believes you’re part of the “exhausted majority.”

Even knowing what to call your lack of motivation, depending on how much it’s interfering with your activities of daily living, can be complex. You may be feeling apathy — lacking the desire to do things when you “just don’t care much about what’s going on around you” — or you could even be experiencing something more intense, called avolition — “a total lack of motivation that makes it hard to get anything done.” Although apathy and avolition can be actual clinical diagnoses and may be signs of mental or physiological challenges, experiencing those sensations even briefly can be very unsettling.

More short-term periods of failing to complete every task you need or want to during the day is often attributed to laziness, pure and simple. But as can be seen by the wide variety of surveys and studies referenced above, a lack of motivation can be caused by numerous issues.

Not getting enough high-quality sleep can be a factor. Simply feeling “down” or being in a “low mood” can make it harder to focus on tasks. Feeling burnt out by your work or in personal relationships can also be a factor. Surprisingly, your own high expectations for your output and your perfectionism can also contribute to decreased motivation.

If the causes are complex, and many of them have developed from factors you already may feel are out of your control — what can you personally do to feel more motivated?

Move

Easier said than done. But this one is really important. After all, the Latin roots of the word “motivate” include “motivus,” or “moving and impelling.”

The secret isn’t to wait until you have a reason that you must move. Just do it, now, and don’t think too much about it. Are you sitting? Stand up. Can’t get away from your desk? Stretch your arms up as high as they’ll go or stretch out your legs and point your toes. Got a five-minute break? Go up and down some stairs or take a quick walk somewhere else in the building or outside.

The key is to prove to yourself that you decided something, and you followed through. In the short term, your movement doesn’t have to achieve anything, but you should realize that enough such movements, in the long term, will add up to better health and perhaps even more energy.

Find a way to focus that works for you

Many experts agree that the pandemic greatly affected our mental health, and not for the better. The increased stress many people experienced during the lockdown years and beyond might be contributing to your fogginess and lack of focus. An environment in which we’re all spending more time in polarized online spaces might also be affecting our ability to focus on what we need to do.

For now, don’t make more lists or download any more organizational apps. Simply make small efforts every day to lessen your distractions. Close an Internet window here and there. Unless you’re waiting for emergency calls, silence your cell phone. Try not to read any news or social media headlines immediately upon waking or before you go to sleep. When you feel your mind wandering during tasks, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and gently ask your attention to return to what you had been doing.

Many experts advocate for periods of completely disconnecting from tech and online discussions. This is unrealistic for anyone with jobs, children in school, or who is waiting to hear back from a doctor’s office to schedule an appointment. But you can and should reclaim small moments of your day through your own power.

Forgive yourself, and then move on

The second part of this suggestion is really the most important part. It’s true, you may not accomplish everything you need to today. But beating yourself up about that fact isn’t going to solve anything.

Choose to focus on things you did do. Remember a bright moment you spent with a loved one or friend. Engage in self-talk and tell yourself you know there were moments that you weren’t at your most efficient, but you forgive yourself. Fully. To forgive fully means that you don’t cling to those memories of failure. You’re free to move forward.

There are a lot of reasons why you might be feeling unmotivated, and you’re definitely not alone. Take solace from that fact, as well as from the small steps you can take to regain your momentum.