memes

In my experience, executive “dysfunction” (“dysfunction” by whose standards?) is a protective, trauma response heightened by rejection sensitivity. So at some point the intrinsic motivation of the individual was quashed (alienation from outcomes of labor), there are external barriers to that persons mental performance (who wants to do busy work after being a full-time student? Or create art after working overtime?), and extrinsic motivation is even more ephemeral given how much work is done for some dickhead (client, teacher, project manager, boss). And so when intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are sapped- what is there to be motivated by?

My typical pattern is using the stress to channel my focus; but it inevitably fails due to burnout or loss of motivation (extrinsic mostly -“what’re you gonna do, fire me? Make my fucking day”; and my intrinsic motivation is mostly dead and buried, but sometimes kind people exhume the remains and it shambles around until buried by the next wave of bullshit)

But yeah saturation to the point of not caring is the ruling class’ sweet spot for the worker - just keep shoveling coal on endlessly (that’s how boilers work right? even in this analogy that wouldn’t cause the fire to smother, right?). But also funny- for instance I’ve been busting my ass on a bunch of projects; doing a bunch of teaching to young engineers; and I’ll still get the Friday morning email from a project manager saying they need something before Monday. Except now that I’ve been through enough shit - and my only communications with this person are them being a pain- I can at least confidently say they should do it themselves then if it’s so urgent, otherwise they’ll get it when they do.

Idk what I’m getting at here. Be kind to yourself? Kindness is out there too, and imo is a better investment of one’s time to find and build vs whatever capitalist grind lays ahead. Alignment with intrinsic motivation is a far better path than pleasing some knob whose only answer is “more!” Even if it does mean revolutionary struggle (more so from a pedagogical lens than an armed conflict one lol); which is draining, but that’s why it’s important to find comrades in the struggle and care for one another.