There is a duality in the behavior a person exhibits when undertaking a stressful job. The mood duality describes the binary swing of motivation that happens during this phase. The road of motivational working has many junctions crossing into the void of a rut and it’s very easy to lose the connection with the original motivation. After the first crossing point the road taken turns into a criss-cross of motivation and apathy with differing portions respectively.
In some cases the prominence of apathy increases too much and apathy becomes a dominating feeling. Under that circumstance a person is more inclined to chase arbitrary pleasures to satisfy own desires. Feeling accomplished, feeling accompanied, finding quick ways to trigger the release of respective hormones like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin… morphing their contentedness levels into a growing sinus wave with compounding lows in time.
The sinusoidal mood swings
The thing is, it’s a losing war for all involved parties. It’s impossible to feel long lasting contentedness from quick wins and the unconscious knowledge of unfinished stressful work lingers in the background with an ever increasing potency. At this point the person is doomed to chase a trivial act of accomplishment in an endless loop, in hopes of escaping a dreadful set of feelings, including a general apathy.
During that general apathy a person normally leaves almost all meaningful everyday acts that aren’t deeply embedded into his or her life yet and just chases the ghost of feeling momentarily good. Studying, working, being active, being mindful etc. becomes a second, or third priority and starts getting neglected. After some time those faded acts of the past begin getting forgotten. In the end this vicious loop stripes a person of all their real accomplishments and meaningful acts.
It’s important to get out of this mood duality as quickly as possible.
All in all if the person doesn’t become aware and try to get out of this loop it will make the person feel even more stressed and almost hopeless. On top of the existing external stress factors now there is an internal source stress, disappointment and sadness stemming from neglecting or even losing his or her desired positive traits.
How to get out of mood duality?
My first intuition tells me to reduce the difficulty of the job. If the difficulty is low enough that it’s manageable without too much stress then the frequency of ruts might be lower. What also matters is not the absolute difficulty of a job but the relative induced personal stress. This RIPS factor determines if a person with a limited will power capacity and a range of abilities and skills can manage a job without quitting or falling into the mood duality.
The RIPS factor is analogous to the height of a mountain you have to climb. Anytime a person looks at a work to be done, he or she sees a sky high mountain they need to climb. This is a huge deterrent and requires tremendous levels of willpower. To make this factor help us we will begin with low RIPS work.
Start small, low stress low difficulty work, and build a habit
Start so small that’s it’s easily manageable that the person can build a habit of completing a job without falling into any spirals of void. And then increase the difficulty incrementally while always keeping the habit of finishing the work out of the loop.
Again a person should begin working on jobs with low RIPS score and work up the scale. Until they reach a maximum RIPS score. Crossing this maximum RIPS level is dangerous. High levels of stress have drastic health hazards.
So is this the maximum difficulty you can safely work on without the mood duality ?
No, you can learn methods of stress management. Learn to be stoic so the stress of future and the regret of past has no effect on you. Learn to be optimistic. So even if you fail you won’t be demotivated.
While increasing the difficulty you can learn to increase your ability to work more efficiently. With the methods of stress management you learned, you can stay at the same RIPS level even though the difficulty rises even more.
So start working on less difficult subjects. Build a habit of finishing without conjuring mood duality, then increase the difficulty incrementally without increasing the RIPS factor too much.
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