The burnometer

I have a lot of difficulty telling the difference between two similar situations: overwork and inertia. When I'm overworked I just feel like doing nothing. When I haven't been doing anything for a while, I just feel like doing nothing. As far as I can tell, the two feelings are identical – but they have opposite remedies! If I push myself to keep working when I need to not be working, that's burnout territory, whereas if I don't push myself out of inertia then, by induction, I never get anything done.

I've previously written about this kind of duality, both in Two-phase burnout and in Starting inertia. In both cases you need different strategies for the different stages. Unfortunately, although recognising that there are distinct stages is useful, it doesn't help that much unless you can tell which stage you're in.

So I've started to think about what kind of instrument would tell the difference. For the most basic kind of overwork you can measure it in terms of hours, so if you feel like not working and you haven't done any work in a while, it's probably not because you're overworked. On the other hand, if you're racking up hours and constantly off your feet, you can safely rule out inertia.

However, that basic analysis has some problems. Firstly, depending on how difficult the work is, how unpleasant it is, or how much initiative it requires, the number of hours you can sustainably manage is going to be very different. Secondly, the decisions and the consequences can happen at different times, so maybe you haven't done any work this week, but that could be because you were previously overworked and still haven't recovered.

You want a burnometer: something that, rather than measuring some likely cause of burnout, detects its effects. After all, if being burned out causes such a severe impact on your work, it should be pretty easy to measure. I haven't figured out exactly what measurement is best yet, but I'm thinking either some standard inhibition test like the Stroop test, or an everyday simple but motivationally taxing task to act as the canary in the coal mine. After all, if you can't bring yourself to wash the dishes or clear your desk, maybe that's good evidence that you need a break.

Regardless, what I think is most important about this is having an objective test. One of the biggest difficulties with motivation is that it suffers from the impaired awareness problem: you can be too burned out to recognise that you're burned out, and you can be so stuck in inertia that you don't even think about getting out. Having an objective burnometer to rely on would be a big improvement. I'll report back if I find one that works.