Thank you for your advice!
Wait, isn't that what daytime is for?
Get out. Play games. Read. Write. Ride a bike. Build something with your hands, with code, whatever. Hit the gym. Cook complicated dishes. Go to restaurants. Join a club and make some friends. Even sleep more.
You need to find what you like to do with your time, and truth is it's probably not what you want it to be. Picking up hobbies and mastering them is what drives a lot of people through life. If that interacts positively with $DAYJOB, that's great but it's rare.
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Having read some of the other replies now, it's slightly disturbing how many of them draw to one of two conclusions: there's something chemically wrong with you, or you've made a massive mistake in life and you need to immediately change every decision you've made up to this point.
Sometimes life lulls. Unless there is something wrong —and yes professional assessment might help here— making massive and/or pharmacological changes to your life might be worse than just riding it out.
I'd personally just shoot for happy first. Treat this as burnout —as anybody working might call it— and take small corrective measures to improve you. If you need an extension to your studies, you can get an extension to your studies. Life isn't going to leave you behind.
And I love when I find myself in situations like this - although it happens more and more rarely as I age.
The answer, of course, is: perspective.
And there are all sorts of ways to shift your perspective, but the general heuristic is to step back, zoom out, and talk to yourself in broader, more generic terms. Details are your enemy when you're in a rut (although they turn into your best friend when you're on a roll!)
Take some time, over a number of days, to consciously and consistently quiet your mind. Just give yourself the luxury for a while to not worry or even think about the details of your situation. Try to find some broad positive themes about life in general. Some things that are, roughly, good. Just stay away from the details.
Take it easy. Disengage for a while and take time to breathe, to walk, to do simple things that are, fundamentally, pleasurable.
It won't take more than a few days to get yourself back on track. Juice will start flowing to you again soon enough. Just don't rush into it, simply let it come on its own terms, whenever it wants.
You'll be fine.
What works for me is, as much as I don't like the word, discipline. I take an hour every week to review my routine and plans, when I'm inspired and motivated. The rest of the time, when I'm not motivated, I spend executing what I wrote down. In the beginning you will feel miserable, angry, and sad. But after a couple weeks you get used to being your own boss. No matter what you feel (unless you're physically ill), just do what's written down and defer the decision making process (is this what I should be doing) to that planning hour.
Perhaps that exercise reveals some deep set intention. Congratulations, that is yours to nurture and grow. Put a definition of a milestone that will move you towards satisfying that intention. Write it down and say it out loud. Repeat that daily, indefinitely. Identify the difference in state between where you are today and your desired outcome. Break the journey down into discrete action steps, then do a step forward. As you go forward, take inventory of all of the actions you've taken so far and admire your growing wealth of progress. Don't interrogate your intention too often or judge it too harshly, if it came from a good place, it will lead you somewhere good.
Perhaps the exercise revealed nothing at all. There is nothing that you want, nothing pulling you any particular direction. Congratulations, you've arrived! You're free from striving and have achieved the pinnacle of human longing. Enjoy the level of contentment, leisure, and freedom that has been the aim of so many, for so long, and enjoy it well.
“Nothing to do is itself a great doing.” ― Ehsan Sehgal
“I sat in my backyard all afternoon and did nothing. Whenever I do nothing I feel I've accomplished a lot.” ― Marty Rubin
Perhaps you have nothing you want, but nothing doesn't satisfy you. Go help somebody who needs it. There is plenty to do, and helping people does quite a lot of good for you. Even if you got nothing out of it, at least someone did.
Don't be too hard on yourself. Hibernation and seasonality is perfectly mammalian. Spring is coming.
I got so depressed that my wife had to make appointments for me and tell my doctor how down I was because I was too embarrassed to admit it.
On a lighter note. You might try pomodoro techniques. Sometimes I do a couple of sessions to get started working until I'm "in to it" enough that I don't need that motivation hack. Also I abstain from social media and all entertainment other than music when I'm at my workstation. Same for when I'm in bed.
AFAIK the brain releases endorphins or something when you exercise, so you actually get a high out of exercising (in addition to getting fitter).
Do it in the morning so that you'll feel good till noon atleast.
Once you're in a good mood positive things will start happening.
Cheers :)
Then stare at the wall. I’m serious. Wake up every day and stare at the wall until you are so bored you want to open a textbook. Then register for only 1 class next semester and slowly ramp back up to 5 classes over the next two semesters. If you find you are able to stare at a wall and still feel nothing (you feel comfortable with the consequences of doing nothing, even failing), then you are in some crazy dangerous territory. I’ve seen this happen to myself and people close to me. It’s not as simple as the task/goal being beyond you. It’s some other insanity. I’ve seen really smart people unable to bring themselves to do basic stuff on a regular basis due to some kind of hang up. You need a cold shower, ice thrown at you, something, someone needs to shake you violently basically.
Alternatively, lie to a shrink and get an Adderral script.
- You have time/opportunity to do whatever you choose to improve your life, and nothing feels worth trying, the time just runs out repeatedly.
- Given a set of unstated constraints on your self-permitted behavior and potential pursuits, when you consider your options, nothing excites you, no pursuit resonates with emotional anticipation.
If that captures it, what’s helped me in my life is to use an analogy of mathematical optimization:
1. the options you permit yourself are too narrow. Try things that other people seem to enjoy that you are unfamiliar with. ie expand your horizon by expanding the boundary of the domain. Give yourself more options.
2. you’re overconfident that different activities will provide negative/neutral benefit, assuming there is something that you’ll enjoy. This is a type of learned helplessness, similar to gradient ascent/descent in a flat zone. One strategy is to take random jumps into the unknown. ie commit more to what you try, try going all in where you’d otherwise be more cautious.
3. If you’re overstimulated on caffeine or red bull, or partially emotionally anaesthetized (through behavior like intellectualization or emotional immaturity) you may be insensitive to what is truly emotionally rewarding. I think this is like a faulty objective function. Try meditation, or removing stimulants, or read about maladaptive emotional coping mechanisms, or try a psychotherapist.
What I do is find something I actually want to do and do that instead. You don't have to forget about the earlier goal; it becomes a puzzle that you need more clues for by doing different stuff for a while.
In short, follow your heart and it'll all work out in time.
- Set a "go-to-bed" alarm. When it rings, wrap up whatever you do and go to bed. Then sleep for 9 hours if you feel the need to.
- No screens nor books or any light in the bedroom when in bed.
- Exercising 20-30 minutes at once every day. A slow job or a fast walk is enough (unless your feel motivated to do more, obviously). Don't overdo it. Do it every day.
- A quick nap after lunch: 15mn with a timer, lay down, close your eyes and stay there.
- When stuck, take a quick walk or walk around the room. Move. Stretch. Don't stay down.
Hopefully this can help you process whatever is troubling you, and prevent your brain from idling on social media.
Then I started surfing amazon books because, you know, anything to procrastinate working.
I came across one of Tim grover's book (Michael Jordan' trainer) and I downloaded the sample to read.
It's a little OOT but something he said rang a bell. He talk about humans overthinking especially in tough situation and gave a pep talk on being relentless. My takeway was "don't think, just do". Suppress the negative voice and just work on it. Nothing is easy. If you want something bad enough, don't think. Just do it.
I think it triggers my inner motivation on why I started my business and being hyper aware of the negative self talk.
So I put myself in robot mode and just started doing things.
I'm not sure how this is healthy for my mental health but it worked.
More positively, basic life management may provide a way forward. Make a list of all the things that are interesting to you. Whenever you are bored or without direction review the list for opportunities. That may mean entries in the list itself or any entry there. Most of the time there is some avenue for exploration and value generation that you already know has potential and also fits the mood and moment.
The idea that there’s something wrong with you for not wanting to do anything is artificial. There’s nothing wrong with being a person. And people have flaws.
I spent a few years playing dota competitively. It eventually led to getting a job working on HoN, a dota clone. But at the time, the trajectory looked a lot like “do nothing but play games for a year.”
You can’t know where your path will take you. Relaxing is the first step toward happiness, which is the real goal.
Alternatively, adderall helps too.
Options are fewer with COVID limiting social interactions, but within your own risk tolerance, force yourself to do something social, even if if you're going to be bored and uninterested. The change of scenery alone can help shake your mind out of its pattern.
Or if you can't bring yourself to that point, take your laptop-- or just your phone if your computer isn't a laptop-- to another location and do there whatever you would have done sitting at your desk. That can be as small a change as another room in your home, or the lobby/commons if you're in a dorm, whatever other location you have available.
The main goal is to gradually introduce changes to your current routine. It's not a silver bullet fix, but it's a small step that can help you get started.
Here is the only solution that works for me: ignore the big picture unless your heart is clearly telling you that you are in the wrong place. The big picture is a mosaic of smaller pictures.
1) Focus on one small thing you can do right now that you can complete before you next feel the urge to, just as an example off the top of my head, play WEC Le Mans on an emulated Amstrad CPC again despite it having no productive benefit.
2) If you're not getting _anything_ of your many tasks done, it kind of doesn't matter much if the "one small thing" isn't from your most urgent project; any work is progress out of the rut.
3) at the same time, if there is one thing causing you major anxiety, address it productively, even if that means acknowledging that you are delaying it and someone else is a better fit. Sooner or later if you delay it too long it'll be taken out of your hands anyway.
What I mean is: usually when I end up in a rut, it's because I had been getting into one for a while and only finally noticed. At that point, the rut is usually starting to get baked into a daily/weekly habit. To get out of it means refocusing on things that matter to me: fulfilling personal relationships, family, personal health/growth, intellectual curiosity, and career growth, not in any particular order, and usually I have a decent idea of where to start, but the rut keeps me from starting.
So getting out of the rut involves taking that first step. The second step becomes easier, then the third becomes easier, and so on. It takes extra willpower but I find that it works as long as I remind myself it's worth it.
When I get into weird unproductive spirals I'm often sitting with the anxiety that I should be doing something else, the burn 6 hours doing nothing with that my anxiety over my shoulder. And do it again. And again.
My advice for that? Give yourself real time off. If you can, like a week with explicitly no goals. No plans. No anything.
If you can, avoid any reddit/twitter/yt doomscrolling if you're prone to that.
Because we're trying to get bored again.
Like super bored. Like sincerely board af. Not just tired or out of ideas what to do.
Get bored af like little kids do.
Hopefully you'll find old interests a little fresher and newer after that. Give yourself space to feel that spark of interest and excitement.
Write a Meaningful Obituary of yourself. You just died. Old age. Your life was an absolute success in all the aspects you care the most. You had all your virtues shining and dominated all your vices and you write about why and how that happened through your life. You write this as the voice of the interviewer even asking details to you "afterlife-self" that is full of joy of leaving Earth in a loving state and peace of mind.
From time to time you can use that to remind yourself of what's really important or re-write the exercise as you mature psychologically as time goes by (your present self might care most about different things that your future self 2 decades from now).
1. Have long term goals, so you always have something to do to reach them.
2. Embrace the rut. Understand that we people are not machines that can efficiently run our program 24/7 and reach a goal. Some times you get bored and demotivated. Accept it, don't be hard on yourself. Play a game, have a beer with a friend, pick up something new, lie in your bed and stare at the ceiling. It will pass sooner or later.
Better advice is to look within yourself, figure out what you really know you should be doing, and go do that instead of whatever it is you're not motivated to do. Figure out what matters to you, find like-minded people, and the motivation will reverberate between you and your chosen community.
At least, that's what the successful people I know do.
[...]
And then, one day, a few years later, it is finished. This layer has dissolved. And the cycle begins again, and again, until you have penetrated all the layers into your deepest purpose. Then, you act fully, until that purpose, too, is dissolved in the bliss of the love that you are."
— David Deida
1.) Identify an area of your life you want to improve. It can be anything, but it should be something you can see meaningful progress towards over the length of a year.
2.) Create or join a 'community' of people online who have insights into this area. For me, this means finding a stream of content though Youtube videos and podcasts, as well as a couple of subject-specific subreddits.
3.) Going forward, the majority of your passive content consumption should come from this 'community'. This will a.) give you enough of an overview on the subject to let you know if it's something you really want to pursue, b.) show you where to find step by step instructions on how to succeed in this area, and c.) provide meaningful involvement levels and time frames, so you have an understanding of how much effort and how long it will take to make progress.
4.) From there, set aside two to three months and start implementing whatever it is you think you need to do to see improvement. These two to three months aren't about making progress, but trying to find the unknown unknowns that get in your way.
5.) Then, create a long term goal, a series of sub goals (if you need to), and a list of daily activities or habits that will make meaningful progress. Implement these, and don't stop.
What you'll find is that improving your life in one area, such as fitness, will improve your life in a lot of other areas, including your academics.
If you want more information on self improvement, I strongly recommend Optimize.me, which has a lot of excellent content and is completely free.
Me, I'm going to move into the kitchen and work on some dishes.
Cut down on dopamine junk and you'll find motivation without any effort.
More from St. John Cassian on the “noonday devil”:
https://www.pathsoflove.com/acedia/cassian-acedia.html
Hope you feel better.
EDIT: Also, sometimes you are just tired and need a break. You know your situation best.
That and exercise. A walk is good enough.
I used to worry a lot about this, but over the time I noticed that I should expect to have slumps and peaks! It would be pretty unnatural to expect my performance to be completely consistent with no variance! Now when I'm in a slump, I know that I will eventually get out of it and that I shouldn't let it bother me too much. As long as the overall trajectory is upwards, I worry less about the monthly variance.
I have also worked out some fundamentals I always try to meet. Exercise, good sleep and a healthy diet are constants for me that I don't compromise on. I expect to slowly add more to this list as I grow older.
Later in life, motivation came naturally, I worked more and I am really happy with the outcomes. Sorry, that this is no advice that is immediately helpful, but I hope that it can be reassuring that streaks of low motivation as a student are kind of "normal" and not necessarily something that needs complex solutions.
When I'm working on day-to-day things, thinking about the next three month project, sometimes I feel "this is completely pointless" and "why are they paying me to do this?" That's when I look at my goal and, hopefully, understand what it does for my bigger picture. My current goal feels awkward and completely "not me." But there's no question in my mind I can pull it off, and if I do, I'll be proud of the accomplishment. It will have meant something to me. The fact that I had a plan will also make it a good story to tell; from idea to completion (or failure).
I'm sure you're already able to get comfort (if not motivation) in the day-to-day by looking at the three month level (a course). You may be looking at the annual level to understand the courses (a program or degree). The question is how this degree ties into your life, at decade level. Education is just a stepping stone to building or researching new things. So how does what you currently do fit into your picture of life? What does it enable you to do? Who will it allow you to meet? Where will it take you?
And then... Never tell anyone about this goal. Don't put that pressure on yourself. The goal is for you, and you alone. You can come up with variations or tangents to tell people, if you think you can't keep quiet. I often tell friends about my 2-5 year plans, and previous 10 year plans. Those plans don't really matter to me. But my current 10-year plan is mine.
- Try going to bed early every night for a week. Going to bed early simply means early enough so you can wake up at 7.30 in the morning without the need of an alarm. - Find a form of exercise you like and do the absolute minimal amount of it needed to get some noticeable positive benefit. I have done 20k runs at a decent pace at various occasions, but I find that I can get 90% of the health benefit by doing a light 20m jog. The trick is making it so untaxing, and so easy to simply do that you can manage to do it repeatedly without relying on too much motivation or inner drive. - Try and give some extra attention to what you ingest into your body. Make some time to cook a meal for yourself (and some friends) and enjoy it. - Spend some time thinking about the things you take pleasure in and engage in those things. Have a glass of wine, smoke a cigarette and find someone interesting to talk to, put some music on, whatever it is just don't overthink it al so much.
With some time you might find you forgot all about this rut, and if it persists, maybe it's true you are not pursuing the right things, but hey that's also just part of the journey of life and you are a student so you should be examining these things right now.
Start with the smallest, simplest task you can complete. The endorphins from that you apply to the next small job and so on. Ideally each of these small tasks move you a tiny step towards your end goal(s).
The idea is to create and maintain a positive flow / momentum. If you stumble step back to something smaller and regain momentum. The difference with discipline (also a valuable trait) is that a good flow makes you _want_ instead of _need_, a more positive and less stressful mindset.
Do you have some sort of goal in mind? I guess if you're asking this question, probably not? Then set some, just for the heck of it. Last year, I was in a similar situation, and somehow I began setting goals for each week: these goals are not result-oriented but process-oriented (I call it a success as long as I spend x amount of time on it); I'd also have a single goal that I'll target to achieve at any reasonable cost. I think the artificial feedback loop (simple goal, goal that I force myself to achieve at any cost, journaling down) made me feel good about myself, probably trained my goal-setting/motivation muscle that has long atrophied.
Another thing I want to mention is that in the book Mindset, the author mentioned that what separates the academic outcomes of students with mild depression is whether they continued with their daily routine or not. I've found this to be profoundly influential for me personally: I'd force myself to complete the actions that I normally did when I'm at better states, and when I feel happy and accomplished, I'd write down what I did, which has served as a tremendously useful source of energy (mostly for self-affirmation) and benchmark when I'm sad.
Finally, it's best that one never enters into such a rut state and it's worse if one stays in it for a long time (since I recall there are many studies showing that long-term stress causes physiological damages that are hard to repair). Therefore, I'd try to self-monitor for the behavioral changes that might signal I'm about to enter into rut, and kick off the prevention strategies.
Have you tried just letting yourself not doing it (whatever kept you at the desk) for some defined time (a day/week)? If this is affordable (wrt deadlines or income), then after awhile you may get bored with the not-doing and may feel the draw to get back to work on it again (thanks, the personal discipline).
Another thing I'd try would be to see if there's some subject blocker there, either specific to what you currently study or more general to the direction of your studies.
It may help just to talk to fellow students about a course/topic, or to a prof, even TA at the tutoring sesssion about your thoughts re direction of studies. Most people have had this sort of blockers at some point in life, different experiences, different solutions, but common feeling at the time.
And, of course, a universal advice. Get in tune with your animal nature - sleep well, eat well, take walks outside (rain or shine), use your body as designed, the mind will recharge!
2. If it's existential: Watch Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement about the realization of the certainty death as a motivator. [i] What would you do if this were your last day? Last week? Last month? etc. What do you really need vs. want out of life?
3. "If you had a million dollars, what would you be doing right now?"
4. Map your Maslow's hierarchy of needs (inputs, contributors, stressors, and goals). Is there anything big missing?
5. Experiment and try new things. Volunteer. Read a new genre of literature. Make something. Explore the nearest library or museum. Get a telescope and look at the planets and the stars. Take up powered paragliding (PPG). :) Or learn how to longboard.
6. Exercise.
7. Healthy distractions. Keep yourself busy on anything else, even if it's chores.
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My computer is a gateway into another world of positivity some days, and a self imposed prison on other days. But you can't solve computer burnout at the computer, so stand up, detach yourself from it, get some breathing room to regroup.
After that I usually go work on a physical project, go for a walk, go for a ride, be outdoors or if that's not possible be physical in some way, like a makers hobby. Weight training is a great option for indoors too.
Burnout can be related to overworking, but it can also be related to not being stimulated enough by your work, a long term anxiousness built up from all your time being spent on something that doesn't satisfy you. It's worth trying to identify and solve the cause of the burnout rather than just working around it.
Start small. Prioritize your list by the least amount of time needed, and start checking items off it, get the ball rolling with tasks that will take 5-10 minutes. Motivation is something you build through friction. Find that friction in the journaling/brainstorming and by knocking out tiny tasks.
And most importantly, recognize that motivation is a wave. Being at 100% is not sustainable or desirable. Enjoy the lows, and wait for that new wave coming soon over the horizon. Good luck and take care of yourself.
(1) https://youtu.be/mhFQA998WiA (2) https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/87s036/1_hour_lectu...
EDIT: Added link to the post which may have a few useful user comments
- Take a day off. Allow yourself at least one full day of not thinking about whatever you are struggling with.
- Take a long walk. Like 1 or 2 hours.
- Listen to some music you love. Maybe even go see a concert (covid permitting).
- Call up a friend or family member you haven't talked to in a while.
- Take a walk with a friend, or have a beer or meal with them.
- Shoot some hoops or pool, or do some manual labor, like shoveling snow or raking leaves. Get your body moving and focus on something concrete.
- Try to dump out all your thoughts onto a pad of paper (or a txt document).
- Draw, paint, play music.
- Get out of the city. Or go into the city.
Basically, get your brain and body working in a different mode. The only thing you know is that doing that same thing every day isn't working for you, so you have to shake things up a bit. Good luck!
Think about that and try to fix the reason behind it.
Also accept your body sometimes is not up to the task and that motivation comes and goes. It is pretty normal to have stints of high motivation followed by low motivation. Sometimes it is bad nutrition, sometimes the weather, sometimes just a fluke in your metabolism, sometimes your brain is just exhausted.
If you beat yourself up for not being motivated you will kill the remaining 5% of energy inside u with beating yourself up. That you so not what you want. Be kind to yourself.
For me (typical overworker) lifting weights, binge watching anime, vaping weed, baking bread, dating girls and playing videogames all helped me to escape depression at some point in life.
The same things could cause you to become depressed, so understand when it's time to stop or put them in the background.
Besides plenty of leisure time, do the bare minimum you need to survive in your professional / academical career while you fix yourself and keep a physical exercise routine so you don't end up physically unhealthy.
Don't fix it with antidepressants; sure they may help temporarily but an addiction is the last thing you need.
It is absolutely fine to be not motivated for long periods of time. IMO it is brain's way of telling you take it easy for a few weeks/months.
As you slow down you may get some sparks here and there that you may want to explore. It's OK if they are totally unrelated to your work. Explore those random alleyways, you never know where'll they take you.
But… you can only do that so many times. Eventually you will conquer those performance pressures as well and need something more. I used to dread boredom and the slow pace of other peoples inefficiencies but now I find comfort appreciating the relaxed life.
A friend of mine did try to get herself out. Then a psychiatrist. She checked the Vitamin D. Vitamin D was added. "Rut" was solved after about 2 weeks.
Stop coffee after midday if you can.
And go for a walk every night instead of sitting at your desk. Don't listen to music whilst you walk. You'll start to notice things, which will be interesting. After a few walks you'll be familiar with the environment. This will allow your mind to wander. Once you can get back a wandering mind, you'll find your imagination may come back, and you'll probably notice the exercise is helping with energy levels.
After a while you'll find you like evening walks and you will be starting to think of a lot of stuff to do when you get home.
I don't know if they will help you, but generally its a good idea to try psychedelics at least once because the potential benefits outweigh the very minor risks by miles.
It might be just enough to knock it out of you.
Exercise cured SOOOOOO much.
Now, if you’re a little older and have some money you can do what I did: hire a personal trainer. The social part is important. The returns to this investment are obvious. Do it even if you are already athletic.
If you don’t have money and can’t join a sports club—rearrange your room, set it up for yoga. I also did this. If you’re really really bad, try DDPY. They even have a bed workout!
And if you can / need—do all three! I’ve actually sort of done all 3 over the past year and I feel so much better. :)
Just scratch the itch. You can even ban studying or work or whatever you are supposed to do for a few days.
A rut is a vicious cycle, and the only way out it is to actively break it by doing something that goes against it.
it's good because it is two-sided, like reality. While usualy only left-to-right a-then-b is assumed.. but there is the other way too, b-to-a, as it's about equivalence.
(so if you want many roads, ..)
There are not so many of these, i had some idea of collecting them..
Like "One is always learning while alive"
but.. Never did.
1) hand off your current tasks to someone else and take theirs 2) help out with other things (depends on your employer). if you are a programmer try helping QA, write documentation, help marketing, etc. 3) try breaking up work into very small chunks. Do a chunk and reward yourself
Travel, go camping, join a meet up group, go to the pub, etc.
You might be able to find something which provides motivation - e.g. if you're studying French you could go and visit France, if you're doing software development, you could buy a few single board computers and muck about with them.
A) Memories. Review your life and things you liked to do when you were young. Are you the person you thought you would be?
B) Deaths. I think of people close to me who have passed on. This reminds me our time is limited and shouldn't be wasted.
Sounds like you no longer want to be a student. That's OK. You can always come back to school later.
Any time you think of something that you wish to do or something you'd want to explore, write it down somewhere so you can come back to it. This might be a notepad, back of your hand, or your phone; it does not matter.
The next time you feel lethargic, look at that list and see if there is anything you'd like to do off of it.
Also, building a strong consistent routine with periodic habits (working out, cooking, gardening, others mentioned elsewhere or whatever suits your fancy) will go a long way.
Also, Lists. No joke.
When your dopamine and serotonin are shot.
Write out where you want to go.
Then break that down further and further until you have actionable lists.
Then just follow those lists.
Takes the dopamine and serotonin right out of the equation and turns the things you need to do into habit.
As for what, something novel. Go someplace you haven't been, read something you haven't read, do something you haven't done.
All of that was necessary, but not sufficient, for me to recover from a similar deflated and unmotivated state during my post doc. My work put a big intellectual strain on me but at the same time, got me addicted to being challenged.
Initially I tried hobbies that were pleasant and not very demanding (such as movies, going to events, light socializing). Somehow that left me even more frustrated. Turns out I needed something sufficiently challenging and stimulating that would switch my brain fully to something else. What worked for me was martial arts (substitute any physical activity with infinite skill ceiling and complex coordination, like dance or learning an instrument) and reading deep books completely unrelated to my expertise.
As my "day job" was quite techy, I took to reading stuff like history and humanities. In case you'd like some random suggestions I particularly remember being satisfied by Albion's Seed [1] and Metahistory [2]. I also did my best to understand some of the best recent work on narrative theory and critical feminist media theory in my native Finnish. [3] For a humanist, maybe learn verilog or complex systems theory [4]?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed 2: https://archive.org/details/metahistoryhisto00whit 3: https://www.adlibris.com/fi/kirja/muusikon-kumousliikkeet-97... 4: https://complexsystemstheory.net/santa-fe-institute/
For me, physical health is important (and for everyone really), if you're not physically healthy, you can't enjoy life. There are a lot of aspects to this, exercise, daylight, nutrition, sleep, stress, fun (which contributes to stress-reduction). There are a lot of different things you can do there, and it takes some experimentation to find out what works for you.
Then in the same way, you can look at career, relationships, what you do with your leisure time. My general point is, it's an accretion of small changes, changes in behaviour, that add up and compound, not one big 'eureka' moment.
In terms of general direction. There was a book I enjoyed recently, 'The Van Gogh Blues - The Creative Person's Path Through Depression' by Eric Maisel. Maisel's idea is that depression can come from a lack of meaning in your life, and that creative people are more susceptible to this than others, because by nature, they seek meaning more.
He had one exercise in the book, which was to write down what constitutes meaning for you, a kind of a personal manifesto in a way. It doesn't need to take long, I thought about it for 15 or 20 minutes. And for me it was generally: learning/growing, relationships with friends & family, having time to relax & reflect, and not being afraid to do hard things.
This helped clarify my thinking. After doing that exercise, I could think, 'How does this activity fit into what constitutes meaning for me?'. So for example, I could ask myself 'Am I going to play some computer games?'. And I would reflect and say 'this doesn't really serve any of my criteria for meaning, so may not be a beneficial activity'. I find this useful in general, in our capitalist society that seems to want to push us all the time to fairly mindless, unchallenging experiences that don't provide long-term meaning.
The nice thing about Maisel's idea is that it's subjective, meaning for you could be a bit different, but it helps to define it.
That all said... :)
Put down the phone. Close the laptop. Turn off spotify. Stare at the ceiling for 2-35 minutes with as little possible external stimulation. Listen to what's already being planned inside of your head. Unsuppress the background thoughts. You'll quickly find there's a lot of advice in there.. I've found that being intentional about doing nothing usually leads to something.
Here's a neat little algorithm to get some insight: maybe ask, "in the past, why did I feel motivation whatsoever?" Write down your answer. Then ask (like an annoying kid) "why?" to the answer you gave. Do this 7 times until you come up with an ultimate explanation - it'll probably be far removed from the first - which is a great thing!
Let's face it - you probably already know exactly what to do, have spent countless hours already worrying about your lack of motivation. Since worrying = thinking + pressure, you're already probably off to a great start to your personal solution! Many times in life the answer was sitting in front of your face all along.
Seems you need reassurance that maybe you don't have to keep avoiding the work, because it's not that scary after all. That said it's ok for it to feel daunting. For quite a few people, college really is.
Maybe external help is good too. Maybe there are people (who are already in your life) who will make things a lot easier for you but the only reason you aren't getting help from them is probably something like "since I haven't done it yet, it's too late to start!" which is often false :)
For instance, a professor who would - if only you'd just send a tiny 2-sentence email conveying "I just don't know where to start" - would give you the answers. Within reasonable academic integrity limits, lol.
Or maybe you have ADHD and are overwhelmed by the disconnect between how easy it is to set super high expectations for yourself but not really get invested if it's not interesting unless there's urgency? Real high expectations, and then getting caught in a cycle of disappointment and self-guilt-tripping. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know your life as well as you do :)
Oh! And one more thing.. the room you're in will change what you want to do. Library, cafe, blanket on the grass in a park. Move your body and your mind will follow.
I'll give you a breakdown of my initial fitness ladder, each step a few days or a week. Go to the gym for 10 minutes and stare at the tv and leave. Go to the gym for 20 minutes, find a tv I like and do some stretches near it, and then leave. Go to the gym and chill on the elliptical for 15 and leave. Go to the gym and try running and get tired after 5 minutes so I do another 5 minutes on an elliptical and leave. Go at a less busy time so I can try out different machine and see where I stand with each weight for 20 minutes. Find that there's a basketball court and borrow a ball from the front desk and shoot a few hoops for 15. Workout for 10 minutes and then stretch for 20.
I know it sounds weird that I am recommending the gym when you said you feel lethargic, but I promise any kind of workout is energizing. In fact just being near people that I can see are pushing themselves encourage me to try a bit harder too, even on days I didn't feel like it.
It's a good environment, and I know it might seem a little intimidating, but I promise no matter what day you go, you're not going to be the only person going for the first time. If nature and outdoors is your thing, that's cool, but for me the social aspect of it is important. I rarely talked to anyone other than the front desk person. It didn't matter, it was just about being around people and not alone. People that judge you for your performance at a gym are going to the gym for the wrong reason. All that matters is you do a little better on the long term average. If you feel weird or concerned about anything, ask the staff. Most places they are pretty bored and they'll want to help you, especially if you're new. They don't want to see you get hurt and that's the perspective you should keep.
Everyone starts somewhere
And over time I've worked up to being able to do an hour in the gym without thinking about it and I fell back in love with biking which I used to do as a kid. I love badminton and it was fun finding people to play with. I got into archery as well. I loved group fitness activities, not zumba, but Yoga was critical to my recovery. It wasn't that Yoga class is anything special, it was that teachers of yoga always approach it from a place of healing or restorative vibes. If the teacher is pretentious or makes you feel bad about not being able to do something, they're a bad teacher and you shouldn't continue their class.
If you want to feel confident about your first day, if you want to prepare, there's tons of yoga instructional videos on youtube for free. If you'd rather do things alone, that's fine too. I would just strongly recommend you reconsider and try it out in a group setting.
The reason why I focused on fitness is because it's something I genuinely didn't care about growing up. That meant I had no expectations for myself. Even the smallest achievements were meaningful and that feeling helped me pull myself out of that rut.
I would explore if there's some underlying mental or physical health concern if the lethargy is seriously becoming a detriment to your everyday function. Generally, for students, there's a mental healthcare provider you can access for free. It doesn't have to be therapy or even an ongoing thing, it could just be a visit to sit and talk to someone for an hour and have them help you figure out what's going on. Taking care of yourself means getting yourself checked out by a professional. They get paid to help you out. If you are feeling sick and it's not really getting better, you go to a doctor and they tell you if it'll go away on its own or if there's something more to be worried about. The same is true for mental health, but not everyone see it without stigma. It's your body and life, you don't need to care about what other people will think about it.
If you're in a place where access to professional is limited, there's a youtube channel I recommend Dr K. He's a Psychiatrist who did his residency at Harvard. He talks to online to popular streamers and gamers and his open discussions helped some of my friends change their perspective on what addressing mental health concerns means.
3 Motivation Styles determined by Personality by Dr. K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRWX21lW_bU is a good video I would recommend for anyone in your position.
Helping myself physically helped me mentally. And that's good because I didn't have to think much to help myself physically, because of where I was starting, just moving at all was a good accomplishment.
I hope that helps, I know everyone says exercise but, to me, it lacks meaningfulness when it's not explained. Good luck.
So try psychotherapy/seeing a psychiatrist.
And try taking a course on another subject that might interest you. If you find out that what you're studying is not interesting you anymore there is no shame in changing, be careful about the sunken cost fallacy. But also make sure that you're not just depressed for other reasons, because if that's the case trying to study something else won't do much.