Covid-19: Motivation, Work, and Rest
A simple Google search that starts with “why am I tired…” is auto-filled with “...during quarantine.” A collective sense of tiredness, boredom, and anxiety-induced insomnia seems to have gotten hold of many of us, and with it, our motivation for our day-to-day work. Why is that, and where can we look to for motivation for our work?
Like most busy college students, a normal day in pre-Covid times involved early mornings and late nights, walking across campus back and forth again to attend lectures and meetings and labs, to work on projects, to meet with friends… On and on, I would practically collapse on my bed every night, utterly exhausted. If overdone, this cycle would lead too easily to burn out, that sense of being stretched too thin. But if done correctly and balanced with rest, there’s a sort of satisfaction that comes from being a good kind of busy, and the feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day becomes a welcome one. The satisfaction of feeling pride in the work of your hands that day is motivation for the next day’s work.
But now, the cycle of work and rest has been uprooted by this crisis, relegating some to working from home while others must navigate the landscape of personal protective equipment and social distancing while carrying on with their jobs. All the while, motivation for the work that we previously enjoyed or at least derived satisfaction from has decreased noticeably. How does being productive from your home, day in and day out, look like? Maybe it’s easier to answer what it doesn’t look like, and the pattern we can fall into instead. We overindulge in Netflix, in turning our sleep schedules inside out, in the ease of solitude and procrastination, in the truth that logging onto a Zoom call doesn’t quite fulfill you the way spending hours with friends in person does. Although they can be blessings and treats, in excess, we can slip into a cycle of all play and no motivation to work, which naturally feels off to all of us simply because that’s not how we were designed to live.
When thinking about work and my frustration with feeling unmotivated, the last stanza of the 90th Psalm has become my refrain during this crisis:
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!
The emphatic repetition by the Psalmist to “establish the work of our hands” feels especially relevant today. While the “work” we individually participate in may differ, we all desire for our work to be meaningful and fulfilling. Working from home in a less-than-ideal circumstance has dampened the purpose many of us found in our lives as students and professionals, making motivation frustratingly out of reach during this season. The timeless prayer of the Psalmist captures that frustration and turns it into a plea to God from his people. How can we, in this turbulent and difficult time, find motivation and purpose in our work again?
The seemingly simple command of the Sabbath to rest one day a week looks very different now. It’s easy to feel guilty about not having this balance figured out, especially since the temptations to fall back into a cycle of watching YouTube videos and avoiding the awkwardness of phone calls is just so easy. But God, in His Word, makes it clear that working is good and resting is just as good. So we must look to the illustration and command of the Sabbath as the foundation for balance between work and rest.
Whether this is the new normal or if this is just for a difficult season, we must learn what true working and resting is like, and like the Psalmist, we must earnestly plead with God, as his people, for our work to be established. We must wrestle what the Sabbath and intentional rest looks like. Once we do, maybe we will feel once again fulfilled and satisfied with the work of our hands, and can once again offer the work of our hands as a humble but true offering to the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth.
