“Burnout” is what habit extinction feels like from the inside, when applied to work tasks or the like.
“I keep doing the thing that used to be rewarding, but it’s not rewarding anymore, so I don’t want to do it so much.”
“I used to believe that getting up early and going to work and closing a bunch of tickets actually made things better for the users. But, over time, it became obvious that the users’ real problems were not getting solved this way. So doing it became less and less rewarding, and it became harder and harder to motivate myself to do it.”
“I used to think that if I worked hard that I would get promoted and get a raise. But that did not happen. So now I am less interested in working hard, and I find it more and more difficult to actually do the thing.”
That’s just habit extinction, as described by classic behaviorism. Even though behaviorism is blatantly wrong as a total theory of human psychology, it’s pretty reliable for things that rely on reinforcement to motivate you.
“Burnout” is what habit extinction feels like from the inside, when applied to work tasks or the like.
“I keep doing the thing that used to be rewarding, but it’s not rewarding anymore, so I don’t want to do it so much.”
“I used to believe that getting up early and going to work and closing a bunch of tickets actually made things better for the users. But, over time, it became obvious that the users’ real problems were not getting solved this way. So doing it became less and less rewarding, and it became harder and harder to motivate myself to do it.”
“I used to think that if I worked hard that I would get promoted and get a raise. But that did not happen. So now I am less interested in working hard, and I find it more and more difficult to actually do the thing.”
That’s just habit extinction, as described by classic behaviorism. Even though behaviorism is blatantly wrong as a total theory of human psychology, it’s pretty reliable for things that rely on reinforcement to motivate you.