There are so many days where I feel horrendously unproductive.Â
There is no specific pattern to when these days occur, though more often than not they appear on my days off. Sometimes they occur in the middle of the week, which is usually a rather inconvenient time for me to lose all motivation. Sometimes these episodes don’t even take up the full day—I could have a very productive morning, then a switch goes off and suddenly all I want to do is transform into a potato (or something to that degree). Sometimes I don’t even notice my productivity lessening—it’s like a slow-draining battery, where you don’t even notice its performance slackening until it’s too late.
I am having one of these days today.
As you can probably imagine, this is an inconvenient time for me to want to potato-ize (this is a word, I’m coining it). It’s midterm season; I have an assignment due soon, an article to write, and… I don’t want to. Vehemently, zealously, I don’t want to do anything. This isn’t a form of procrastination—the assignment is underway, and clearly I got around to writing the article. When I procrastinate, I usually fill my time with what I call “productively unproductive” endeavours, which usually entails me going on a cleaning frenzy, or reorganizing my to-do list – neither of which I had any desire to do today. I wanted to stay in bed, in my pajamas, and ultimately become as close to an inanimate object as I can get. Hence the potato-ization desire.
I beat myself up for it. I had a list of tasks to achieve. It’s Saturday, so I had no classes—nothing that could possibly pull me away from my work. I went to bed on Friday with a full plan for tackling my daunting to-do list, I even woke up on Saturday morning planning to be productive… and then the next thing I knew, it was 6pm and I hadn’t done a single thing. By the time I finally dredged up some twisted form of the will to do something, it was 9pm, leaving me with not enough time to complete my list, which then made for a very stressful Sunday.
I curse myself every time I do this. The day after, I curse past me for giving present me more work to do. I feel guilty for being unproductive, then feel guilty for having previous unproductive days, and it’s a vicious cycle that won’t go away. I feel guilty if there are other people involved in my unproductivity, such as when I’m working on a group project (thankfully, I’m not right now)… or when there’s people waiting on me to submit my biweekly article for editing.Â
The truth is… I’m tired.
And that’s okay.
This is a mental obstacle that I am actively fighting to overcome. I don’t need to be operating at 100% every day. I don’t need to have ten different things (sometimes more) on my to-do list every day. I don’t even need to fill any semblance of “free time” I get with reading, or crochet, or any of my usual hobbies. Some days, I just don’t have the mental capacity to do anything… and it will be fine.
I’ve found that my motivation tends to plummet immediately following busy or stressful times. Saturdays, after a long week of classes. The day after my last exam of the term. The first few days I’m home for reading week. My mind is screaming at me to take a break, if only for a day or two, and instead, I bully myself for being unproductive. More often than not, this practice makes me less motivated.
So instead, I’m going to try to rearrange my to-do list. Put less to do on at least one not-so-busy day every week, instead of piling everything onto that one day. I won’t schedule anything, or very much, for that day. Every now and then, I need to remind myself that my hyperorganization is not my natural state, but an unconscious compensation for my ADHD, and oftentimes my meticulous schedule is not realistic. The mental exhaustion will build, I will burn out, and then I’ll be worse off than I was before.
Don’t feel guilty for being tired. It’s okay to take a break. Potato-ize, even for just a few hours.