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.
If you've spent all day in university with a heavy day of lectures (sitting, listening, staring at a screen / whiteboard) you're probably not going feel ready to sit down and crack out an essay or project in the evening. You need to spend some time doing something that takes your mind in a different direction, getting active is a great contrast to lectures for instance.
You need to be well rested for motivation to take hold, and if it doesn't you'll at least be rested enough for discipline to get you going.
>> I've found myself sitting at my desk each evening > > Wait, isn't that what daytime is for?
This is also a really great thing to pick out. I started doing a lot better at university when I treated it as a 9-5/6 thing. I'd spend the day on campus either in lectures or doing assignments. At 6pm at the very latest it was time to do something different. I broke that sometimes if I had a nasty combination of assignments, but on the whole this gave me most of my evenings and weekends back in my final year while doing my dissertation. It was a huge quality of life improvement, far bigger than anything else I did during university.
Also, buy a cheap ticket a couple weeks out and fly to a new city for a weekend, if in the US, Austin, New Orleans, or San Juan PR. Stay at a hostel and interact with people having fun.
You have given a how but it’s hard to do without a why.
Burnout and lethargy are due to both physical and mental health factors that feed into each other.
A two track strategy is needed. First for your physical health
- Increase the amount fresh fruit and veg in your diet. Reduce sugars and carbs.
- Go for a run in the morning get some fresh air.
- Have a nice warm bath before you go to bed have some soothing tea and get good sleep.
This alone will not be enough if you’re seriously burnt out. Next we move to psychological factors
- Introduce noise and variety into the system. This can be as simple as visiting an interesting new place to a full blown crazy experience.
- Start meditating and learn about how to use it to calm your mind.
- Think about the kind of person you want to become and why you want to do it. Your current ideal you and your strategy to go about getting there aren’t working or providing you with satisfaction. Be honest with yourself about where you went wrong, what your strengths are and what you can bring to the world. Once you do this you have a vector pointing all your actions towards a new ideal you informed by your past mistakes.
Your physical health should provide you the foundation to go for it.
Happy to discuss further over email / DM if interested.
Who would want to sit at a desk when the sun is out? I'd rather be outside.
- Night: Wake up, work until the morning, others are asleep, no distractions. Work gets done a lot faster and you have time for:
- Morning: Sync on anything that requires other people.
- Midday: Go out and enjoy life, so you're physically exhausted and ready to:
- Late afternoon: Sleep.
Many of these suggestions, which I endorse, are referencing the description, and the answer to that is simple: Let yourself do nothing"productive". Force it even. Time for a vacation, maybe even a bit of a lengthy one. Your brain and/or body is trying to tell you something. This is basically the final phase before full burnout. Take it seriously.
And sometimes the answer is just to actively do nothing "productive" for a couple of weeks or months. Do nothing until you can't stand it anymore. Very few of us are built to go go go every day for years on end. As much as I like the civilization I live in, no previous civilization in history has even been able to do that much, or expected it of very many people. You aren't a bad person if you just stop for a while.
And if it feels bad... bear in mind, one way or another, you are going to stop. You can stop in a controlled manner, take a break, and come back refreshed and functional, or you can stop when you are a broken human being. We do not generally have a "just push through and don't stop" for this kind of work.
There isn't a specific "middle step B" because the idea here is specifically not to have one.
Yeah I get tired of this response. YOU NEED DRUGS NOW! No, life is often boring and mundane. You will not be happy every second of it, if you were you wouldn't even know what happiness is because it wouldn't stand out. The solution is to force yourself to do something, whether you feel good is irrelevant. Motivation rarely appears on its own, it's a result of action. You do not wait around to feel motivated.
The problem is modern society gives you this option when for centuries waiting to feel some sort of innate internal motivation wasn't an option, you did what you had to for survival whether you felt like it or not.
Advice to OP. Just do anything besides what you are currently doing and that will change your trajectory. Like try not working at your desk and work somewhere else. Work different hours. Don’t work and do something else. Just don’t do what you’re doing - do one of the infinite amount of things you could do otherwise
> Life isn't going to leave you behind
Thank you. I guess it’s easy to fall into the habit of focusing solely on the future. I’m going to take your advice and work on things I can change now to start gaining momentum again.
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.
I don't mean that I need to tell others that I'm in a rut and need perspective change. I need the others – friends and colleagues – to help anchor my perspective to reality (or their reality) by simple having normal interactions with them.
Needless to say, the pandemic has made this hard. And I'm afraid that the older I get, the less I can rely on this very good mechanism I have for perspective change. Any advice?
(A therapist suggested I train my own ability to reality-anchor. It worked a tiny bit, but given enough time I always start doubting my own anchoring, and need peers to reanchor me. I know their view isn't canon either, but it feels objective to me. Mine feels shaky.)
It's likely you'll physically want to throw up from just looking at the images, and this bodily reaction is for me one of the "deepest" ways of my body physically understanding how good I have it. I haven't had to do this in the last 5 years, and only did this 3 times total.
This can seem like it's wrong, and maybe it is, but it worked for me so maybe it'll work for you.
There's a side benefit to this, I've become more anti-war, which I think is a good quality to have.
To trigger a change in perspective in me, I start cleaning and organizing. Finishing or closing projects. This brings me back where I started and I can rethink from afar.
Organize.
We need to step back and feel the bliss of small things that happens around that we miss to notice every day in life.
As it says above, don't put yourself under pressure on doing something. Just try to be aware about the things that you do every day. Taking a bath, having a meal -> Take a deep breathe do it slowly and enjoy it.
Then slowly slowly and eventually, you will come up with new perspective on how to approach life the way you want it to be. You will notice internally when this phase happens. All the very best!
There’s a couple of different kinds of “rut,” though:
1) Ennui
The project has become a “slog,” and I am tired of the grind.
This happens pretty much daily, for me.
Is this my life? Where did I go wrong? Should I just pack it in?
This tends to happen as the project nears completion, and I’m “polishing the fenders.” The work is more “rote,” the bugs are harder to find, and I get disgusted, by looking at my code.
If it is #2, then I need to take a more significant “break.” I will often find an alternate project to work on. Many folks will take a vacation. Coming back can be difficult, but, once I’m fully engaged, again, I find I am back to full sail.
I tend to work on alternate projects. I find it invigorating, and keeps me “in the swing.” That does not work for many folks, as they need a far more comprehensive “change of scenery.” I know folks that go on wilderness vacations.
I actually did a #2 break, the last couple of days. I have been working on a project for the last year, and we are approaching ship (still a ways off, but we can see it, from here). I was starting to feel quite “burnt.” As you approach “ship,” the work becomes a lot more “picky,” you have to say “no” to other team members, and you start to feel the responsibility, settling on your shoulders.
I took on a Web site project. I’m not a Web designer, by trade, but I do OK. It took me a couple of days.
It was one of those projects, where things had been allowed to “rot,” and I was cleaning up a “mess.” Gave me an excuse to grouse and rant, while I got the site back on its feet. I do a lot of volunteer work.
I’m done, and will be getting back to the main project, now. I’m looking forward to it.
One big problem, is that employers tend to take a dim view of employees “taking a break.” This is especially true of #2.
In that case, you may not have a choice. It can profoundly affect the quality of the deliverable. The employer needs to get with reality. It may not happen; especially if they are “self-made” type As (like many startup founders). Large corporations tend to be better than small shops.
I’m semi-retired. I can do what I want. I did not have that luxury, before.
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.
Start by committing do doing your thing three times a week for five minutes at a time. Then five times a week. Then fifteen minutes at a time. Then an hour, and so on.
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.
I have electric fruit fly traps that produce blue light. Two flies with one stone. :)
I take a multivitamin, D3 + K2, zinc, magnesium, iron (deficiency), and fish oil. Low T can also cause many problems (a medication I was on caused it). Diet is important too.
Cardio exercise ^ 3.
Making screen time a boogeyman is not a useful way to help yourself address underlying issues. People escape using screen time, and in moderation it's healthy. Taking a break isn't bad. Mental health issue cause a drive to escape using technology. It's not the other way around.
Most people in school are young enough where deficiencies aren't a major issue unless they are also restricting their diet due to finances or other issues. Restricting can cause malnutrition but it's far from common. Just having an, on average, well balanced diet is more than enough. If there's a reason to suspect an underlying health condition, talk with a doctor.
I agree that cardio is amazing but other from of sports and activity is great too. Resistance training and yoga are exceptional as well. Archery is one of my favorites. The important thing is time and consistency, so finding and doing a physical activity you like is all that matters.
Getting checked out with a mental healthcare specialist pre-emptively is important. People have a yearly physical, I'd argue a yearly mental health check should be strongly encouraged too.
I don't play anything that's too competitive anymore, as I don't have as much practice time available. I also find solo/cooperative experiences to be more friendly, and less toxic.
Deep Rock Galactic has been great so far. I can go 'hypermode loot goblin' with the Scout, or a more relaxed pace with the other classes.
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 :)
People tell me this all the time, but when I exercise I just feel tired afterwards?
Maybe it only happens to people who are fit who have a history of exercising regularly?
And some people get a huge rush - these are the people who start to do Ironmans, Triathlons and extreme running (100km+ runs)
To elaborate: I’ve very rarely felt endorphins from exercise. I’m in good shape, I’ve exercised a lot in the past (less so now), I even ran a marathon (not quickly).
After a short workout I do feel more awake and I like the bodily feeling of having exercised, but I’ve rarely felt any endorphin release during exercise which has pushed me forwards.
For example, the marathon I did was pure type 2 fun (fun in retrospect). However most runners I talk to say running is type 1 fun for them (fun at the time). Definitely not for me, it was miserable at the time.
Of course, don't listen to 120 bpm music to 'energize' you while you do it. And YMMV.
> People tell me this all the time, but when I exercise I just feel tired afterwards?
Okay, to normalize the discussion, consider stationary biking. For me I get the aforementioned high only when I exercise for atleast 30 minutes.
If I do it for just 20 or 15 minutes (instead of > 30 minutes), then as you said I just feel tired rather than good. I guess there's some threshold before you start feeling good, and this is probably different for different humans. Being the petrolhead that I am, I think of it like a turbo-lag followed by the turbo-kick.
> it only happens to people who are fit
I'm definitely not fit (though I'm not obese either) :)
> who have a history of exercising regularly? No there's a tolerance thing I think, based on what I read in [1]. So in the long run you need to exercise more to get that same level of feeling good.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3025957/what-happens-to-our-brai... (I don't know whether or not the person who wrote this article is an expert.)
When I get to the gym and throw some iron around, my 'good feels' come from knowing that I got out and got some of my energy worked out, and helped improve my body/got enough exercise for maintenance. I think of it as a pleasure or satisfaction that I derive from knowing that I've done something good for myself, and not so much from the physical act of exercise.
The closest I get to getting endorphins is when I get a new deadlift PR. I get to turn off my brain and (mentally) go 'ooga booga', recruit my entire posterior chain, and put all I've got into it.
But I've also overdone it a few times, and seen stars/had blurry vision/wanted to lay down for a bit after that one rep, so maybe it's just teasing that breakpoint?
(for the record, my current all-time pr is something like 295, but I'm working back up from 275. Not winning any contests lmao)
I've tried having rigorous trainings in the morning for weeks and the only thing that happens is that I feel tired for the rest of the day.
Only late-night trainings before bed work for me.
Do what works for you. Cheers mate.
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.
This is the key insight. A rut is entirely emotional. When you don't want to do something but you need to do it there is an emotional conflict.
Robot mode is not emotionless. It's satisfying a different emotion (fear, anxiety,etc) than desire. It might even be considered a form of bravery. In a crisis situation do you panic or do you 'just start doing things' and help without thinking about it? It's a similar response.
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.
I don't know if you came across this [1]: "If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.
By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.
If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."
This kid of encapsulates what I do.
[1] https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2014/05/mcraven-to-grads-to-ch...
Cut down on dopamine junk and you'll find motivation without any effort.
1) acknowledging that deciding to watch a movie in the background, or be "kept company" by anything distractingly visual on a second screen, is a subconscious avoidance of the thing you aren't focussing on. Admit it, move on. In reality, I don't believe it is possible to work and watch a second screen. Work and listen to music or the radio? Yes, absolutely.
2) centralise your distractions. You're going to be distracted anyway, so as far as possible choose one thing to be distracted by; something that has its own inherent limits. If you're going to doom-scroll, try a set of interesting RSS feeds instead.
I noticed this pattern not too long ago: was reading a technical book, felt compelled to drop it and browse Twitter or similar. I "dug" into my head internally to find out a reason why (much like you do in meditation) - I wasn't tired or bored, the book was interesting and I didn't really want to quit it - and I simply couldn't rationalize a reason. It was purely a dopamine-driven habit which I was simply not in control of, it was automatic.
You hear a lot of talk how humans are just as programmable as anything else, and that was one of my personal come-to-Jesus moments.
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones...
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.
The studied therapeutic use of psychedelics always requires a therapist to help someone in a positive way. Generally recommending to take drugs recklessly in the way you have is irresponsible. If it's someone's first time and they go in blind without without a guide, it's reckless.
Additionally, going to a therapist will also help you see things differently. Drugs aren't required.
Psychedelics are powerful drugs. It's hard to know if someone can help themselves out of a bad trip or if they will spiral further. It's hard to know how much the people around them can help if things become difficult. They don't always change your perspective in a positive way. I am not saying the drugs are the reason for anything bad, but they do amplify what is already there.
I think you would agree that there are some people who shouldn't take psychedelics at a certain moment. Mindset in my opinion is much much more important than setting.
Psychedelics can easily become an escape and a way to avoid your real life and responsibilities. That's my main concern and why I am against recommending them generally to a reader of HN I don't know personally. Especially when it's someone questioning motivation and not something more existential.
I can expect an average reader of HN to do research. But I doubt most people find the answer to their lethargy in psychedelics. I don't think it should be anywhere closer to an initial response to what the author is describing.
I would argue psychedelics are most mentally expanding when the user doesn't feel a strong need to take them.
Your argument boils down to "psychs can be dangerous, therefore some people shouldn't do them", which is a non statement, because this applies to so many other things, including certain vitamins for people with certain conditions.
Furthermore, when you talk about ambiguous terms like "can", you have to talk about some general sense of numeric probabilities of risk to be consistent with how you make decisions in day to day life. You definitely CAN get into a massive life destroying accident when you drive you car, but you chose to still drive because the benefit of efficient location change is worth it to you.
So for psychedelics solely based on research studies, here is what he currently know as far as benefits (im not going to link the papers, they are pretty easy to find though)
- Majority of people report positive effects in general.
- Majority of adults in studies who micro dose report anti-anxiety and anti-depression effects, and at those dosages, there is absolutely no reality altering experience
- In certain studies, a single dose can have lasting anti-anxiety/anti-depression effects for years, as well as evidence of breaking habits for other drugs like smoking/alcohol.
- Physiologically, the drugs are anti-addictive. Frequent use has exponentially diminishing effects. Furthermore, large dissociative trips aren't exactly a positive experience, they are mentally challenging and exhausting, so people are unlikely to use it as an escape mechanism.
- Physiologically, the drugs are very safe, no long term physical side effects. Of course there is a danger present if you buy synthesized LSD that is contaminated/cut with something, but for psilocybin, you grow the mushrooms yourself, and if you are buying them from somewhere, they really can't be cut with anything since they are not synthesized.
As far as dangers go
- Very rare cases of HPPD, usually associated with heavy repeated use
- Generally just a bad time for the duration of the trip (even on high dosages), no long lasting effects. Bad trips end being just bad experiences.
- Secondary derivative dangers from behavior resulting in disassociation due to large dosages, such as tripping/falling, e.t.c.
And thats pretty much it. Even for people with psychosis/schitzophrenia, the general recommendation is to avoid them, because there isn't enough data.
So if you look at all of that in terms of reward/risk, and do the same reward/risk for coffee, psychedelics are even better for you. With coffee, you can drink too much and become jittery and have a bad time, and it can be dangerous for people with heart problems, but for the average person, the benefits are generally positive (except caffeine is chemically addictive, unlike psychedelics)
Nobody is saying that you should do large doses off the bat either, its completely fine to do micro or mini doses, where you can feel the effects but still very much conscious and aware of reality.
So yes, I agree that some people shouldn't take psychedelics. I also agree that some people shouldn't drink coffee. For the majority of the population though, I absolutely believe that everyone who isn't psychotic/schizophrenic should try them, in whatever dose they feel comfortable doing. Not because of my personal experience, but because of the high statistical chance of a good experience, with downsides being very low risk.
I actually completely forgot about how much it helps me until I did it again that last time, and it gave me the strength to completely change my life around. I’m sure everyone’s experience is different though and if it isn’t proven in countless journal articles or endorsed by enough VCs, I don’t think the majority of this site would want to try it out.
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.