Leaning on caffeine or amphetamines to force action works, but thats not the same as desiring action. I'm motivated by fear and anxiety, and I want to change to being motivated by desire.
Assuming you're not extremely burned out, you probably don't have this same level of problem with your hobbies or side projects (when you can time for them), even if you find that stimulants are also helpful for executing some of them some of the time.
If it takes stimulants to prod you into action at work, it's likely that your work just isn't intrinsically rewarding for you, at least much of the time.
SSRIs make me even more lazy, which results in anxiety about not doing anything and failing responsibilities.
I've found this to be most true for myself when I'm pouring a lot into work and don't have much time to recover.
I've started reading a lot of books for pleasure in the past 1-2 years, which I also used to do a lot when I was a kid. But after I finished college (which took a long time for me— my undergraduate 'career' was a sometimes rocky eight years or so), I didn't read for pleasure at all for years and years.
If your hobbies overlap in some way with your career, or you're coming home very tired, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a factor.
You might have some success incorporating gentle social pressure into your hobbies as well. Most of my side projects right now are essentually book clubs or study groups with close friends. We're all busy and tired. 'Deadlines' slip, meetings are cancelled. But we want to stay connected to each other, and that provides a positive through-line that keeps us showing up and doing our best, whatever that may be.
It's still a form of social pressure, and I won't lie to you and say it never involves feelings of guilt for me. But it feels different from the work pressure. Its rootedness in sharing thoughts and experiences with people I love makes it feel more like something that emerges primarily from a positive desire, even if my commitment to it generates secondary feelings of obligation.
> SSRIs make me even more lazy, which results in anxiety about not doing anything and failing responsibilities.
I understand. Even genuinely useful medications often help with one aspect of a condition (usually one that inhibits participation in society or the economy— an aspect whose costs are substantially external) and actively exacerbate others (typically aspects whose costs are primarily internal to us).
I'm afraid I don't have any advice for dealing with such tradeoffs. I have struggled and do struggle with that kind of thing myself. :-\
I've had the same notion on societal participation, nice to see that same thought brought up by somebody else. That said, from personal experience, I've had SSRIs bring me back to normal without significant downsides starting from a pretty bad starting point. (Where normal does still involve ups and downs but with a pretty solid bottom to the downs at a more or less acceptable level.) So that is a possibility. There needn't be a trade off.
What I can imagine is that the perceived negative effects by the original commenter are actually a result of the medication doing its work. Elsewhere in these comments others have pointed out the use of what I would call their negative gas pedal: i.e. powering through tasks based on anxiety, negative self talk and/or shame. I've used that "pedal" a lot in my life, always with positive short term effects ("getting things done") and negative long terms effects ("burning out" or more precisely blowing out my motivational faculties). I suppose SSRIs by virtue of dampening the anxiety, negative thoughts and shame, could cause this negative "gas pedal" to falter, resulting in a feeling of having no aim at all because the main means of moving forward has stopped functioning. Going back to the article, I think it is ineffective to label that as "lazy". I think it is better to see it as a period that allows motivational faculties to restart based on what another commenter called "desire". That is a term which I personally dislike based on my philosophical convictions, so I'd prefer to call it "inspiration" or "drive".
> I understand. Even genuinely useful medications often help with one aspect of a condition (usually one that inhibits participation in society or the economy— an aspect whose costs are substantially external) and actively exacerbate others (typically aspects whose costs are primarily internal to us).
This internal/external trade-off is an interesting viewpoint that I've never really considered. It aligns with some of my negative experiences with the mental healthcare system.
I don't suppose you have a handy rubric for that?
I had the same intention. I found that creating psychological safety was more useful than trying to generate new positive motivation.
Then, once I've procrastinated, my fear/anxiousness of the consequences of NOT doing the thing kicks in and I rush to complete it.
It's great! /s
The best solution I've found is to slow down, introspect into and address my fear/anxiety, and reassure myself that most of the time my fears are entirely or mostly unfounded, and that even if something "bad" happens it won't be catastrophic.
I don't practice that enough, and that's the hill I'm climbing now. I'm also trying to learn to lean more into the feeling of accomplishment ahead of time. In a "it will feel so good to get this done, even if it's not great" way.