After holidays

After the New Year holidays, for some reason, it is especially striking: people are divided into those for whom the end of the holidays and the beginning of the working year are a burden, and those who are happy. Thirty times in my life I returned to working days. It happened to everyone, of course. The end of school holidays and the beginning of the third quarter is the loss of paradise, one of the most painful moments in life. Fortunately, everything was somehow less dramatic at the institute: it was much more interesting to study, and meeting with classmates after a break was perceived as a holiday. The session is over, and new items are ahead.

They begin to read pathopsychology — what could be more exciting! In my life, periods continued to alternate when returning to work after the holidays was, like at school, the end of all good things and the beginning of all bad things. Or, as in an institute, a continuous anticipation of the new and beautiful. With age, of course, passion subsided. As a result, based on my personal experience and psychological practice, I formulated my own «theory of post-vacation».

Of course, people are not divided into those for whom work is a burden, and for whom it is a joy — this is a very primitive classification. Expectations are shared—they are endearing and repulsive. And often — combined variants of the first and second types of reactions. This is also supported by psychological research. The anticipation of something valuable, interesting and bringing joy is already an incentive to want to do something further. And the expectation of something unsatisfactory, boring and painful is demotivating, even regardless of the result.

Returning to a job you hate after the holidays is an anticipation that gives the rest an exaggerated value. And work — exaggerated unattractiveness. It seems that rest and entertainment is the best thing in life, and work is its painful forced part. Those who are a burden to enforced inaction, but can not wait to return to work, will not agree with this. And these people are not from different planets. Only their expectations differ. And relationship with work. And these relationships can be changed for the better.

The author of the famous «flow theory» Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi summed up many studies in the field of motivation remarkably. Among other things, he revealed the secret of how to make (almost any) work interesting. In short, the gist is this:

It happens that the tasks that the work sets before us are perceived as too complex, unbearable. And we estimate our ability to cope with these tasks low. In this case, work is a burden for us — “given” and “can” do not coincide. When the tasks set before us seem too simple to us, this also does not contribute to motivation — we know that we are capable of more, and we begin to get bored.

Work brings joy when the tasks match our skills and knowledge. And even slightly surpass them — but just so much that they intrigue and excite, but do not suppress. Fortunately, in almost any business there are plenty of opportunities to independently adjust the degree of complexity of tasks. You can simplify and complicate them yourself. The reference points here are our own emotions.

If your work causes boredom and irritation, then most likely it poses tasks for you that seem elementary to you. And it is difficult to express themselves in them and experience pleasure from this. Maybe this is a reason to ask yourself, what else would you like to learn in your profession? How can you do what you are doing now differently, in a new way, more productively? And the most monotonous activities can be made more interesting if you think about how to do them better.

If the tasks are overwhelming, then most likely you have set a too global goal, you need to concretize it, and break the task into parts. For example, my task now is to write this column. I am tempted to set myself a global task — to tell you literally everything that psychologists know about motivation. Such a statement of the question pretty much suppresses me, I must say. It will take me a couple of weeks, a lot of nerves and patience, and it is unlikely that I will be able to meet the given volume.

Therefore, I gladly simplified my task — you need to write several paragraphs to get about five thousand characters. And briefly outline in them one of the most intelligible concepts of attitude to work, which, moreover, is close and I like it myself. Thus, I made my task specific and measurable. Shall we practice?