Demotivated and coasting at work? Don’t settle in that funk

IT’S TEMPTING to think about demotivation and coasting – the latter generally arising from the former – as signs to move on from a job or career you’re in.

Moving on is especially enticing when you think of it in the context of “quiet quitting” – the argument for acting for yourself, keeping firm work hours, respecting more strictly your personal time outside of work, and steadfastly not doing more than what is required of you in your job.

I’m not here to talk about that sort of coasting, though. That is an oversimplification to me. Instead, I think that there are many reasons why and how someone ends up in a rut at work; in several of these, we may not even realise that we are in one.

It follows that depending on these reasons, what needs to be done would differ significantly too.

The why and the how

I’m going to put myself out on a limb here and admit to having been through this phase roughly three times in my working life – each of which arose for varying reasons.

The first was led by disillusionment with my managers for not dealing with feedback that my teammates and I had shared about others in our department whom we felt were not pulling their weight.

It made me feel that undeserving colleagues were being rewarded because they were on better terms with the managers. Quite naturally, my enthusiasm for my work fizzled away, and I saw myself psychologically checking out, just trying to get through each day and get my work done.

The second was a big change in my life – and a resulting shift in personal priorities – coupled with a fundamental realisation that how the company was run was ultimately incompatible with my personal values and with my beliefs about the direction the company should be taking.

There were fundamental differences between what my bosses expected of me and what I felt was right and sustainable. I ended up turning in work that was not as good as I might have liked it to be.

The third round stemmed from a recurrent cycle of insomnia and distraction that led to persistent general exhaustion, poor time management, inability to learn effectively and the overall feeling that I was not good enough to do my job well.

As you might notice, none of these were instances in which I was happy to not be at my best. All three of these ruts had very different origins, from which I had to figure my way out.

What to do next?

In the first scenario above, the nature of my job at the time thankfully did not involve a minimum quota of stories to write, and by that point in my years at that company, I was at the stage of focusing more on stuff I pitched and chose to do, instead of being mostly assigned work.

I was therefore able to simply slow my progress on my concurrent stories, and because my direct supervisors understood (and in some cases, shared) my frustrations with upper management, they were patient with me as well.

So while I could be thought of as being at peace with what I was doing work-wise, in reality I really didn’t like how resentful and angry I was all the time.

In the second rut, hindsight now tells me that the clear action I should have taken more speedily was to move on to a new job – and I wish I had acted sooner than I did in reality. But I also like to think that there is a reason I wound up leaving when I did.

As for the third, the solution lay in taking an audit into my personal life and stressors, recalibrating those and also being disciplined about going to bed on time.

This took me months, unfortunately, and was the longest time I spent in a work rut. But thankfully my bosses were extremely supportive of and patient with me as I navigated a few life transitions that I was going through.

Depending on how and why you got into a rut, the solutions to climbing out of it would differ – for you, it may involve talking through ways to redesign your job scope with your supervisor, or sitting down with your manager to list clearly what your priorities are, so you can focus better. 

Or perhaps you may find yourself relating to my experiences above. In that case, talking to a loved one or a trusted mentor who can take a step back for you and see the bigger picture might help to crystallise your options.

How to recognise you’re in a rut

It’s important to be sufficiently self-aware to be on the lookout for this, especially when you didn’t make the active decision to quiet quit.

For me, it was realising that I was energised doing everything other than the most important work task I had on hand – the moment I tried turning my focus to it, it was like my body started to shut down and my brain felt too tired to work on it.

This led to many late nights and even all-nighters spent forcing myself to get work done to meet deadlines – a good number of which I wound up busting as well.

Another cue I picked up on was in meetings with my colleagues – when I found myself getting distracted and struggling to keep up with what they were discussing.

The way I see it, the flip side to coasting and feeling demotivated is the desire to pursue growth in the work you are doing – investing time outside work hours to deepen your knowledge, hone your skills or refine and improve existing work you have done.

If you’re not feeling happy, or at least all right with starting a new day of work; or if you’re struggling to get your tasks done at the end of a day even though you don’t find your workload to be overwhelming; or if you find yourself perennially bitter or resentful about your managers or colleagues, these might be signs that you have become demotivated or are coasting.

Whatever has led you here, know that it’s not always a dead-end situation – there are many ways in and out of this.