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Struggling with a lack of motivation at work? Here’s why an apathetic mindset can be destructive and how empathy can help.
When it comes to anti-skills, apathy might not seem like the worst offender on the list. It’s natural not to love every minute of your job, after all, and feeling bored or unfocused at work is something we all experience from time to time.
Left unchecked, however, apathy is an insidious trait that can undermine your health and happiness, as well as negatively affect everyone around you.
Luckily, just like any other mindset or bad habit, there are plenty of effective ways to shift from apathy into a more positive state, and it all begins with understanding what apathy is and why we may be experiencing it.
So, what exactly is apathy at work, why is it so detrimental to our career and well-being, and how can we deal with it?
What Is Apathy at Work?
Apathy is an emotional state that lacks feeling, interest, or concern, resulting in a lack of motivation to do basic daily tasks.
What Apathy Looks Like:
It presents rather like boredom, but is actually different in a few vital ways. Most importantly, research has found that short-term boredom prompted by a temporary lack of stimulation can result in an increase in creativity and motivation, while apathy results in indifference and even behavior that goes against your own best interests and the well-being of those around you. It might look like:
- Counting down the hours and minutes until you can leave the office
- Avoiding everyday tasks like checking your inbox for days at a time
- Avoiding a colleague in case they ask you for your input in a meeting
- Anhedonia, or a loss of interest in your hobbies, skills, or routines
- Lack of interest or total loss of interest in your work and any outcome
- Slogging through your daily routine with minimal effort
- Long-term fatigue
You may notice your own apathy affecting your productivity and start to wonder what’s wrong with you—"am I lazy?" is a common thought that troubles people when they’re struggling with apathy.
Or, you may notice apathy in a colleague and become frustrated that their lack of engagement and passive behavior is preventing you from making the progress you’d like to make towards your common goals. Their indifference can make you feel as though they are selfish and self-absorbed and don’t care that you’re doing all the heavy lifting.
Whether you’re experiencing apathy yourself or are encountering it in a colleague, it’s important to understand the causes of apathy, as well as some strategies to overcome it, so that you can avoid getting stuck in negative cycles.
What Causes Apathy in the Workplace?
Dr. Milton Mattox identified five key phases to workplace apathy which follow a common pattern that unfolds throughout many people’s careers:
Five Key Phases of Workplace Apathy:
- Felicity: This is the phase near the beginning of your career when you’re full of excitement for the future. You tend to be highly engaged, innovative, and motivated, but also inexperienced during this phase.
- Sanguinity: You’re now fairly settled in your career and have taken the rose-tinted glasses off, but are still highly motivated to progress, seeking promotions, new opportunities, and salary raises.
- Disillusionment: Having been through a lot in your career, you’re now feeling disappointed and frustrated with your work, and you might be experiencing high levels of burnout as you try working harder or spreading yourself thinner in an effort to counter your negative feelings and change your circumstances.
- Melancholic: Your disillusionment has evolved into persistent negativity about your work, and you feel as though nothing you do makes a difference, which can result in a lack of desire to set high goals or try anything new.
- Apathetic: After a sustained period of melancholy in your work, you have become used to “going through the motions” and can even appear relatively cheerful about it. You don’t feel that things can change and just look forward to leaving your job; your investment in the quality of your work and the outcomes of any minimal effort you put in is very low.
How the Apathy Cycle Starts in the Workplace
Apathy at work tends to present as a lack of motivation, which is usually caused by a sense that your work doesn’t matter, that you’re replaceable, or that your skills and experience are underappreciated by those you work alongside every day.
It's a feeling that, no matter what you do, your contribution won’t have an impact. Perhaps you started feeling frustrated and unmotivated at work because of toxic work culture, a bad boss, a mismatch of values, or not having a challenging enough role.
Research shows that a drop in dopamine triggers a drop in motivation, which means that the more unhappy you are, the more unmotivated you will feel. As a result, you can get stuck in a vicious cycle of feeling unhappy and unmotivated, taking less action to improve the situation, and therefore remaining in an apathetic state. It's crucial to identify what triggers apathy, which we will get into later on.
On the flipside, completing a task and having positive feedback on that task can trigger dopamine, which in turn makes you feel more motivated and less apathetic. Positive action begets more positive action.
It’s also important to remember that apathy can be a symptom of some invisible mental health issues or medical conditions like:
- Bipolar Disorder
- Depression
- Schizophrenia
- Frontotemporal Dementia
- Alzheimer's disease
- PTSD
- Medication side effects
- Brain dysfunction, especially in relation to the frontal lobe
To get to the root cause of your apathy, it’s worth asking yourself these questions:
- How long have I been feeling this way?
- Which tasks do I struggle with in particular, and is there a pattern to the type of work that I want to avoid or that triggers a sense of apathy?
- Do certain colleagues inspire me or make me feel more apathetic? Or, do certain situations?
- Have my life circumstances changed lately, and has that affected my mood and health?
- Could my current lifestyle (diet, sleep, exercise, medication) be affecting my energy, and what changes could I make to improve this?
Whatever the cause of your apathy, it’s important to understand apathy as a symptom rather than a character trait that’s inherent and therefore unchangeable; where there’s a symptom, there’s usually a solution.
What to Do About Workplace Apathy
Individuals can break out of this negative cycle with some self-awareness. While the root cause of general apathy differs from person to person, identifying it is the first step.
Without this step, individuals experiencing these feelings of indifference may feel unproductive and unfulfilled.
If you’re experiencing mild apathy that’s rooted in a temporary period of boredom during a quieter season in your work, there are plenty of productive things you can do to have a little fun and improve your career in the process. Similarly, if you’re suffering from dopamine deficiency for health-related reasons, you’ll need to address the underlying cause of your apathy by examining your diet, sleep, and exercise habits.
Before you start career-hopping, hoping that a change of scene will reinvigorate you and make you feel passionate about work again, it’s wise to look within yourself for answers and be realistic about the fact that no job is perfect. After all, if you don’t have good strategies for dealing with workplace apathy, you’ll find it follows you from job to job, no matter how many career changes you make.
As we’ve already explored, workplace apathy can sometimes be a sign that it’s time to change roles, or even pivot your career in a dramatically different direction. It can also be a warning sign of health issues, burnout, or even unmet emotional needs—which is when empathy comes into play as a powerful way to deal with apathy.
Why Empathy at Work Is the Antidote to Apathy
One less widely-discussed antidote to apathy is empathy. We’ve explored why empathy at work is so important, but when it comes to a team member who’s experiencing apathy, it’s vital.
When one experiences emotional apathy, they are disconnecting from the humans around them. As a result, those around might not feel sympathetic or willing to help.
Rather than shaming (“You’re being lazy,” “You’re letting down the rest of the team,” “You need to pull yourself together”), empathy approaches problems with non-judgmental curiosity.
Empathy can help us to understand the cause of apathy, and come up with creative solutions that work for everyone involved. Fostering empathy in the workplace can also reduce the likelihood of our team developing apathy in the first place. When we’re in the habit of looking outwards and engaging in active listening, we can not only notice ways to serve our clients and customers better but also help our colleagues be the best versions of themselves.
Increasing our empathy for our colleagues and clients or customers can also deepen our connection with them and make us feel more motivated to help, which breaks the cycle of apathy for ourselves, as well as for those around us.
How Do You Show Empathy at Work?
An empathetic team celebrates wins regularly and recognizes the efforts and hard work of team members with regular positive feedback.
Empathetic leaders ask non-judgmental questions regularly, and especially whenever issues arise, and engage in active listening so that they can get to the root of a problem without letting their preconceived ideas about what’s going on cloud their perception of what’s actually happening.
Showing empathy to our colleagues doesn’t mean that we ignore problems or have low standards. Rather, it's an effort to help someone who might be struggling with mental health conditions where apathy is one of many symptoms. Research shows that empathetic teams are more productive, and this may be because empathy reduces apathy and increases motivation.
Imagine getting these two different types of feedback for your work:
- “No, it’s still not right. You need to work on it some more—here’s my list of edits. The deadline is next week, so please get it right next time.”
- “You’ve been working so hard on this, but it needs a little more work before next week. I’ve included a list of changes I’d suggest making—do those look doable in the time frame to you? I really appreciate all your work on this, by the way. It’s almost there!”
How do they make you feel? The first one is kind of panic- and shame-inducing, right?
The second one, however, is just as clear on what needs changing, but it leaves you feeling inspired and motivated to reach the finish line on the project.
A little bit of positive framing can make a huge difference. Before you give feedback, it’s always a good idea to engage your empathy and imagine how it would feel to be on the receiving end of that feedback. Ask yourself how you can frame things so that the overall impact is motivational, rather than making someone feel like nothing they do is ever good enough (because the logical conclusion of that thought is “What’s the point in even trying?”).
Just like following the Platinum Rule at work, helping a coworker requires that you step out of your comfort zone and into theirs. Are there unobtrusive ways to tap into emotions in order to break through? It's certainly worth a try.
When Leadership Is Apathetic
If leadership there feels consistently devoid of empathy, and you feel apathy or even burnout start to creep in, it might indeed be time to look for a new job. Empathy is surprisingly catching, though, and by focusing on practicing empathy yourself, you may well be pleasantly surprised at the repercussions.
