80% Of Professionals Say They Have No Motivation At Work

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Heading into the final months of what has already been an emotionally heavy year, people working from home are now confronting another – albeit familiar – foe: seasonal change, and with that, seasonal depression.

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Professionals Have No Motivation To Work From Home

A Confluent user on Blind, an anonymous professional network, ran a poll asking, "Anyone else feeling the blues? I have no motivation to work, especially being at home every day, and just want to stay in bed all day."

The poll had 1,353 responses; here are some key learnings:

  • 80% of professionals say they have no motivation at work
    • 83% of FAANG professionals say they have no motivation at work
      • Facebook is the FAANG suffering most, with 87% of its professionals say they have no motivation at work
        • Contrasted with Netflix, where only 50% of its professionals say they have no motivation at work
    • Only 16% of professionals could not empathize with the "holiday blues" replying, "No, I love my job."
      • 38% of Netflix professionals responded, "No, I love my job"
    • 88% of Intel professionals say they have no motivation at work
    • 95% of Linkedin say they have no motivation at work
    • 92% of Lyft say they have no motivation at work
  • Overall, finance professionals (90%) feel less motivated at work than tech professionals (82%)

You can view the raw data here.

Overworked Employees Becoming Sick Of Work

A professional at Zoom responded to the poll,  sharing, "I'm just so burnt out from this year. Still behind on work, every day but cannot work overtime anymore or I will be sick. The expectations have been off the charts since March and I just can't care anymore, I'm doing C-quality work instead of A-quality. Just enough to get by"

A user at Groupon shared, "Had the blues even before winter started, I was bored and didn't know what to do with my life. Work surprisingly picked up with interesting things to work on, and I feel like I'm back on track. I started to work out more and indulge less at least during the week. I also found a side thing that I'm interested in working on for myself.

My advice, keep trying to find something interesting to you, it sucks finding it, and you feel like nothing really clicks for you anymore, but once you do, you'll be back on track again."

In a society with limited knowledge about occupational burnout and how best to address it, people often ignore their symptoms and keep pushing themselves, prolonging their burnouts, making it more severe, and leaving more long-term scars. This poll makes it evident that professionals need a break, especially during these tough winter months.