Feeling Unmotivated? Here’s How to Get Out of the Rut

AI is transforming the world. And it starts with the right compute. ARM is the AI compute platform trusted by global leaders, proudly NASDAQ listed, Built for the future. Visit arm.com discover.

Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm alison beard.

Okay, let's all be honest with each other for a minute.

Yes. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably someone who cares a lot about.

Your work and career.

I hope you can tell that I.

Care a lot about mine.

But there will come days, maybe even months or years, when we just aren't feeling it. We've lost motivation, we're burnt out or just bored. We're going through the motions of our jobs but not enjoying them or excelling in the ways we could be. This happens everywhere, from the front lines to the C Suite. Most of the advice about how to address the problem is directed at managers and organizations, how they can get us more engaged. But is it possible for us to snap ourselves out of these ruts? Our guests today say there is, and they've developed a four step process for doing so. They're here to walk us through it. Robin Abrahams is a research associate at Harvard Business School, and Boris Groysberg is professor at Harvard Business School. Together they wrote the HBR article Advice for the Unmotivated. Robin. Boris, welcome.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Thank you for having us. Allison.

Let's start with the problem, which I think that you initially called the working dead when we were working on the article together. How do you know when you slipped into this kind of disengagement? How do you measure it or quantify it?

You can't really quantify it because you know it when you're there. And in the words of William Kahn, who was the person who wrote the first article about disengagement, it's a withdrawal of the self. You're just not yourself at work. And that's why we called it the working dead, because, you know, you do feel like a zombie. You're not putting forth physical, emotional, cognitive energy. You're kind of going through the motions. You're operating on your limbic system a lot of the time.

One executive described it, I was giving work my time, but I did not give it my heart. And the second one was I was feeling empty and frustrated, like I was running in a race without the finish line.

In terms of the responses that you got from reaching out to HBR readers and executive education participants, do you see this happening at every level of the organization?

Well, I Think the range, it's one of the kind of, I guess, most interesting things in our research that we can clearly see this happening at a frontline level in the organization. A number of people have told us, like, look, I mean, the higher up you are, the less you should feel disengaged. We have so far had conversations with about 20 plus CEOs, I mean, people who are actually running their own businesses. This engagement reaches out as high as that group of people as well. So it feels to us present at every level. It plays out in a different way, but it's certainly present on every level.

I mean, the reason that people get disengaged from their work is because the demands of the job, be it emotional, physical, cognitive, time, logistics, overwhelm their personal resources, the support they're getting, the amount of time they have, the knowledge they have, et cetera. And that can happen at any level of the workplace. And also over the past three years, I would say demands have increased in almost every area of life and resources are generally not keeping up.

Yeah, I think we're all, we're all keenly aware of that. And what about the problem of not necessarily burnout, but boredom, you know, particularly mid career, when you've been doing the same job for a long time and can sort of go through the motions and still be competent.

If it's feeling like a problem, then it is a problem. I mean, to some extent this is very much, you know, are you subjectively experiencing this as oh, I have to go into the office again, or is it more like, you know, I've got this part of my life handled?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're feeling it as a problem, then I would think it's especially these kinds of cases of just boredom. I kind of like the job, but I'm not entirely sure all of that that our article is really especially well suited to address.

A few years ago we did a piece on boredom. So some of the dynamics are actually somewhat different. The challenge with disengagement is that many people who are actually disengaged act on that disengagement. So disengagement is kind of costing the person who is disengaged as well as the organization that is employing that person. But if you look at this, and I think you mentioned this in the introduction, most of the advice and research has been done like, how can we make Google a better place to work? Right. How can we make John Smith or J. On Smith a better manager? Right. Like when we talk about engagement or disengagement. Right. The focus has always been on organization and a manager. What are the practices that organizations should employ and what can managers do? Right. But you know, what Robin and I have experienced over the last few years as doing this project is imagine you are working for an organization that is not doing it or for manager that should not be managing. Right. I mean, a lot of time we basically say, well, you should just leave and get another job. You know, many people cannot leave. So is there anything that you can do in a situation that engagement is not that prevalent to keep yourself more engaged. Right. Or to keep yourself less disengaged?

A lot of our advice is very much geared around don't make your situation worse. Because when people kind of hit an exhausted state, when they hit burnout, they will frequently act out. They'll pull themselves back even further. They kind of dig themselves into a little doom spiral of learned helplessness. And we're wanting to arrest that cycle for folks.

Yeah, absolutely. Because you drift into an area where the disengagement isn't just a bad feeling you have personally, but something that is destroying team culture. That's diminishing your performance, that's, you know, eventually might hurt your career.

That's diminishing your ability to make wise decisions about what to do with your situation.

Yeah. So let's dig into the process. Why don't you first give us a quick overview of the four steps.

Well, we call it the DEER method for Detachment, Empathy, Action, and reframing. And we did not just put them in that order to make the cool little acronym. It actually sort of works sequentially that people first need to detach from their emotional reactions and give themselves a little bit of distance to develop empathy, kindness for oneself and others. That can then lead to appropriate actions to reassert your sense of agency that you can do something in the world to. Reframing, thinking logically about what is my situation? Is it the job? Is it me? Can I conceive of things in a different way?

Do you see this as sort of a short term, immediate intervention every time you feel yourself disengaging? Or is it more about sort of changing your mindset and behavior for the long term so that you're less likely to fall into that state?

I think both, you know, a number of the things that we've advised. If I'm just having a particularly bad day at a job where I'm not, I mean, you don't go in feeling, you know, yay, go team, 100% every single day. Nobody's like that. So even In a minor slump. I mean, one thing I tend to like to do is if I just feel like I'm not getting anywhere on my work, clean out the office refrigerator. Everybody loves it, it puts everyone else slightly in your debt and you can see the results of what you've done. So a lot of times just that having a genuine human connection with a colleague or customer can be enough to get you over a puddle. But these processes can also be used to like help you get across a river, right?

And also some of the practices that we describe are just good practices for long term career, right?

Oh true.

We talk about exercising and self care and I think there is a short term impact of those practices. There are days, right, when you just feel you're disengaged, whatever that is. Even though you might kind of enjoy what you do and so on. I think there's a short term impact of those strategies and I think some of them, if you practice them, would help you to build a sustainable long term career as well.

Okay, so detachment is the first step, but it seems like an odd one for people who are already feeling detached. So what exactly do you mean and why is it helpful?

It is probably when people kind of ask us, it's out of the four, we keep getting this, wow, this is really counterintuitive, right? But if you kind of think about why you need this detachment, if you are in a disengaged and motivated state, having some distance and having some perspective might be really, really kind of uncomfortable. But long term can provide you with some ideas or some strategies of how to kind of get re engaged again. I mean we heard stories from people enrolling to take some classes in a different city, taking time off to immerse themselves in something new to get energized. I still remember a quote from somebody who guessed the course, gave me a lot of new ideas, found myself feeling eager to start implementing them. Learning something new can motivate you, right, and get you re excited about your work.

But the detachment isn't just about detaching and finding things outside the work. It's really about getting a little bit of distance. Not from the work per se, but from your own emotions. So things like meditation, exercise, just getting out of doors, feeling your body can help you sort of calm down, get in touch with your feelings a little bit and get that distance that you need to make the right choices and not be stuck in a kind of flight or fight mode or I can't do anything, everything's just terrible. And it will be forever to get yourself out of that emotional reactive pattern. Because if you weren't in an emotionally reactive pattern, you wouldn't have gotten disengaged and burnt out to begin with.

Yeah. One of the interesting tips was to try to talk to yourself in the third person. So give me an example of how I might get myself motivated to edit a 6,000 word article when I'm just not feeling it. By talking to myself in the third person.

Yeah. Robin and I practice this from time to time.

I'm not sure that it would motivate you for that. It's more a question of if you're trying to decide, oh gosh, do I even want to be in a job where I have to edit 6,000 word articles? Think about it as if it were honestly an HBS business case. Alison Beard woke up that spring morning wondering if she wanted to be here. And you think through and you just sort of put yourself as a little protagonist because, come on, it is always easier to solve other people's problems than your own, Right?

Yeah.

You think about yourself in the third person and believe it or not, it will sort of trick your brain into thinking of it as someone else's problems.

Right?

Yeah.

What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so the second step is empathy. What's the advice on this front?

Empathy is very much a sort of two pronged thing. People often first think of it in terms of, you know, kindness, sympathy, I feel your pain. But there's also the cognitive aspect of it. Just like I feel your pain. Why did that happen to you? Let's analyze this. Let's try to think through other people's points of view. Both of those are important to sort of re energizing yourself. It's also important to have empathy for yourself, have a degree of kindness towards yourself. One thing that is very characteristic of people who are disengaged or burnt out is, is that they tend to act like automatons and treat other people in a dehumanizing manner as well. And to break out of that, to try to make those human connections, honestly fake it until you make it. But having emotional connections with people at work, it can be very crucial.

Yeah. That's why if you think about some of the kind of advice that we gave us, I mean, looking for brands and helping others, there's two executives, kind of their perspective really stand out in my mind. One, she talked about kind of asking questions, right. Looking for one on one conversations with employees at times of low motivation. Her quote was, when I Speak with my team. It makes me challenge I have at hand feel less daunting. The mountain to climb is still there, but the conversation makes me feel less alone in climbing. So, I mean, people look for those relationships. I mean, interesting enough, people reach out to their former mentors and coaches. And maybe if there is one piece, and it's kind of indirectly in that bucket, but if I have to kind of add maybe one piece to it that we kind of missed, and I should give credit to colleague of our. Gamzi is kind of practicing gratitude, right?

Yes. That's a good one.

It was mentioned a few times. One of the executives said, I remind myself of things I'm grateful about. This instantly changes my perspective.

Yeah.

So that's kind of like the gratitude practice. Like, if I had to add one more, that's the one that we probably missed.

Yeah. And I think the self compassion piece is really important too, because I know I find myself when I'm not feeling motivated, getting mad at myself or feeling guilty.

This is another way that the thinking of yourself in a third person can help because, you know, you wouldn't be like that lazy, terrible, Alison did this and that. You just. You'd be more neutral about it. You know, you take away that voice in your own head. One of the really fun findings that I discovered when I was looking at the psychological research on all of this is that people who are suffering burnout at work feel better when they help others than when they themselves receive help. If you can do something for another person, you feel powerful, you feel good, you feel like you have a reason to be in this world.

Yeah, that totally resonates with me. I find when I'm feeling unmotivated and then also guilty about feeling unmotivated, I will reach out to one of my best work friends and we sort of might commiserate a little bit. But then I find myself that I'm helping with his problems.

Right.

And he's talking to me about not feeling bad about my problems. So sort of it's that empathetic, virtuous circle happening.

Exactly. And even in far worse situations than, you know, any workplace, really, like POW camps and natural disasters. We, Morris and I studied a bit about survival psychology during the pandemic. And this is what has enabled. People who go through horrific experiences like that without psychological damage do it because they have connections with other people. You can get through almost anything if you can connect to the people that you're going through it with.

Okay, so the next step is action, which is, you know, that actually Seems the hardest because the whole point is that we don't feel that we have the energy or motivation to do anything. So you mentioned earlier cleaning out the office refrigerator. What other kind of actions might help?

It's actually one of the hardest things when you are disengaged is to take action. And maybe somewhere along the way, we provide advice to people, say, look, I mean, look at small things first. Right. Tackle the little stuff. Right. The one that you can kind of like concentrate on and get things done. Invest in outside activities. A number of people that we interviewed talked about just even like simply like daily to do list. Right. For both business and the personal stuff. Right. Kind of like setting up specific goals in the morning, the exercise of crossing things off. One person said crossing things off felt like real progress. Right.

I make little boxes that I can do check marks in because that actually feels like happier than crossing things out.

I mean, we've all done the thing where you do the thing and then you write it down, your to do list so we can check it off. Right?

That's true.

Right.

That would be the three of us. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to take a slightly different tack on this, which is disengaged employees, by and large, already are taking action. They're just frequently taking unhelpful action. They are more likely to drink, use drugs, sleep, watch television, passive Internet use on the job, playing pranks on co workers. You know, these are all dangers of disengagement. And the reason I told you this thing was sequential, the reason that we put emotional detachment and then empathy first is to kind of get your head in the right space so that the action you take is the appropriate action. Because people who are disengaged are often taking inappropriate actions that are just going to make their situation worse.

Yeah. So apart from tackling little tasks, are there any other types of actions you recommend?

One of the best, and surprisingly, is to invest yourself in something that is not your job, to develop a hobby, some kind of outside activity. There's been some recent articles published that were really interesting where the assumption going in was that, oh, if somebody has a side hustle or a volunteer commitment, then they're going to be less engaged at their job. And in fact, it was not the case at all. That sense of agency, empowerment, connection that you get from those other things transfer into the workplace and can make even a job that's not particularly meaningful feel meaningful and fulfilling.

If you do the D and the E, the first two steps, it might open up your eyes to see, you know, like there are some pieces, parts of your jobs or maybe kind of something that other jobs that exist in organization that you can do that really relates to your strength and can re energize you as well. So looking for those, I mean, I'm talking about like special projects, right? But not the special projects that nobody cares about, but like a real special projects, right, that almost like enrich your job. And we heard from a number of people that when they did the DNA, it allowed them to see some things in organization and pick some things that were slightly outside of their world, incorporated into their jobs, and that was kind of enough to get them re engaged back at work, right?

The curiosity part of the empathy, as you're connecting with people, you're talking to them about what are their experiences, what's their area of expertise, will frequently give you some kind of path to moving forward. But if you go into these situations without some emotional detachment and some empathy, you're just going to be flailing around.

Okay, so finally, the last step, reframing. Why is that helpful and how can people practically do it?

Reframing is once you've sort of reestablished, as it were, your humanity through empathy, through getting some distance on your own emotions, through taking some action and feeling like you can take meaningful action. Reframing is kind of the one where you. You ask yourself, okay, what about the situation though? You know, is there a different way I can think of my job that will make it more fulfilling? Can I restructure it in some way? And maybe the answer is yes, and you'll have a better vision of how to do that. Maybe the answer is no, and then you do need to be moving on, but you'll have a sense of what you want to be moving on to.

We provide kind of three strategies for people, right? Examine your work identity. Consider how other benefit from your work. But the one that I kind of always. I mean, this speaks to me because I think about it a lot in my own work and in my own job, is looking at the big picture. There are a number of different ways to get to that. I mean, we have an example of somebody who in the energy business, I mean, that person joined the leadership program, right, when one of the exercises were to kind of define his core values. And then what he did is got in the habit of asking himself daily what he's doing today towards those type of core values and prioritize a lot of daily tasks around that, right? And he claims that this has been like tremendously helpful. So examining kind of your values why you do this for. And another person talked about going to dinner with his sister. Right. Make him realize what's important in life, health, family, and that he was depleting a lot of his energy on short term problems that really didn't matter. So, like, this kind of looking at the big picture and also trying to understand what really matters to you is kind of really important part of reframing.

You know, there's, I feel a kind of idea floating around that, you know, people should always find their jobs intrinsically meaningful. Not everybody does. Not everybody gets jobs that are engaging. How do those people get through it? And the main way they do is by thinking about, you know, this is what the job is providing to me. I'm providing for my family, I'm saving for my education. I'm doing that. It enables me to live in this community and do these things. It's really okay if the job is kind of a means to an end.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

And there's been a lot of research on how the extent to which, when people are doing unpleasant, boring tasks, you know, repetitive physical labor or repetitive clerical labor, or, you know, studying long, boring things, thinking about what they're doing it for, you know, what life outcomes they're doing it for, really does help them get through it.

Yeah. So what happens if you try all of these strategies and you still feel unmotivated? Is it a sign that you need to talk to your manager, that you do need to leave your job?

It might be a sign that you need to talk to your doctor. I mean, maybe you have. I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that a person might really feel unable to pull themselves out of it. But yeah, there may be a point at which, you know, you do all of these things and then you look around and you're like, oh, the problem is the situation.

Mm. Yeah.

If you think about engagement and you think about what's controllable versus not.

Yes.

Look at research on engagement. There are differences by countries, there are differences by industries. There are even some differences between, like, functions. Right. Those are things that are not really controllable. If you take a step back and say, what is controllable? The controllable thing is the organization you work for.

Yes.

Hopefully, right. Over a period of time, the controllable thing that the manager you work for. I always say, like, if you work for a bad company and you work for a bad manager, you're in hell. If you work for a great company and you work for a Great manager, you're in heaven. But many of us are working for a great company in a bad manager or a great manager in a bad company. So in those cases, you can. If it's a company is great, bad manager is thinking about job rotations. Even if you're going to take a lateral kind of assignment, you will feel better if your manager is the one who creating this engagement. Moving to another manager would help you. If it's an organization. Right. Then not everybody have a chance to move. But you should seriously consider if you should switch organization, by the way, a lot of people do for a lower compensation. Because what you have is if you can't change the organization, if you cannot change the manager, and you cannot change yourself, those are the three levers that's available to you. If you are unable to create engagement energy in yourself, you got to look at other things that you can control. And those are the three. Right. Like yourself, the person that you work for, and maybe the company that you work as well. So we don't advocate for turnover, but there comes the time that says, you know, what should be doing something else for somebody else.

Yeah, I'm going to shout out two players on the Boston Celtics who just took less lucrative contracts to continue to play for the Celtics because they obviously felt they had a good coach at a good organization, which makes me as a fan, very happy.

That's a perfect example. Yeah. And people will make a better choice if they've gone through these steps. They won't run from instead of to. They won't resign in a harmful way that, you know, blows up their career and possibly who knows what else. They will make better choices if they've gone through, you know, all four of the steps.

First, do either of you have a specific story about struggling with motivation and how you use this framework or a piece of the framework to get out of that rut?

I would say for me, one thing that that has always protected me, you know, for years now, against that kind of loss of motivation is I do invest myself in a lot of activities outside of work. I do theater. I wrote a play that's going to be produced next year. I'm involved to some extent in my husband's business and all of those things. You know, it's like if I'm having a bad day in one area, I can maybe kind of make it up in another. And even if that's not, I'm learning perspectives in one world that I can put into another. Like, oh, this is really interesting. You know, this also applies to this problem that I'm having over here. And so it kind of keeps everything fresh as well as keeping my network of weak ties, people that I don't know that well, active so that I can learn more things, discover new opportunities.

Yeah.

And those things can really help inoculate you against that loss of motivation.

Robin Boris, it was really a pleasure working on this piece with you. I know that it helped me regain my motivation, which I really appreciated, and I hope it's going to help others. And thanks for talking to me today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Alison.

That's research associate Robin Abrahams and Professor Boris Groysberg, both of Harvard Business School. Together they wrote the HBR article Advice for the Unmotivated. And we have more episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization and your career. Find them at hbr.org podcasts or search HBR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Du, Associate producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product manager Ian Fox, and senior Production specialist Rob Eckhart. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison.

Beautiful.