I never end a workday feeling satisfied. It doesn’t matter what I have accomplished, whether I could have actually done more, if I outperformed everyone else, or even if someone confirms “wow, that is an impressive list of accomplishments.” The feeling I sit with at the end of each workday is “I didn’t get enough done.”
For years, this blindly drove me toward a habit of overwork and eventual burnout. Now, after the recovery work I’ve done since my burnout, I can say that this no longer drives me. I recognize the thought, I recognize the pattern, and I can let it be there without responding. But it’s still there. What I want is to end my days satisfied, not perpetually dissatisfied.
So, I was sitting with this feeling and reflecting on it. It’s curious that this feeling of “not enough done” isn’t tied at all to the output of the day. This suggests that my dissatisfaction isn’t actually about productivity, but rather upstream of it.
And what lies upstream? I don’t have a clear answer, but I do have some inter-related hypotheses.
A simple explanation is that my nervous system is merely continuing to run the old program from childhood of never feeling like I am good enough. This is the core pattern that drove me into burnout in the first place. The workplace was where I received validation, and I relished in that. Of course, that validation is not constant, and often our bosses, coworkers, or random people on the internet are dissatisfied with us. Naturally, the solution is that I need to work harder, do more, be better, perfect my work. Then nobody can be dissatisfied with me. Of course, every dissatisfaction drove me toward higher standards – it’s at that next level I’ll finally be free from criticism! A terrible trap.
I see ways that this dissatisfaction is load-bearing avoidance. We might view a statement like “I can’t promote this yet, it’s not ready!” as discernment. But if nothing ever crosses the threshold into “good enough,” it’s not discernment – it’s avoidance. Then I don’t have to take the fearful step of marketing my work, of putting myself out there to be visible and open to criticism. The dissatisfaction generates the permission not to ask. Which, in turn, prevents the external feedback that might actually produce satisfaction, which further preserves the dissatisfaction. A nice, neat closed loop.
I also see that my goalposts are structural, not situational. The concerns often on my mind are along the lines of “will I still be valued enough to be employed amid AI disruption, rising energy costs, and economic collapse?” and “how can I keep my family safe in an increasingly destabilized climate and political environment?” No amount of daily productivity could ever register as “enough” against this cluster of interconnected, civilization-level threats. I seem to have an internalized belief that all I need to do to avoid these problems is simply work harder – perhaps because that’s the element I can control, and it’s worked for me in other situations. But the scale of what I can do as a single human on any given day, or even in a whole lifetime, pales in comparison to the scale of these problems. So my nervous system stays activated, scanning for danger and pushing me to keep taking action.
These insights are useful, but simply having the insight doesn’t eliminate the habitual pattern. Retraining ourselves, especially to overcome long-standing patterns, requires practice.
The New Practice
One part of my contemplative/spiritual practice is connecting with sufficiency in the present moment. To me, that sufficiency, rather than simply the absence of desiring more, is the essence of satisfaction. But it seems that I’ve unconsciously exempted work from that practice. Yet work is not a separate part of life, compartmentalized from the rest of the time we live, though we often envision it that way. I can extend my practice into that part of life, too.
I have an “end of workday” routine. I tidy up my desk, review what I’ve done, make a plan for tomorrow, and get my office set up for the next day’s work. It’s a ritual that’s important in my transition from work back into home life.
The new element is spending a few moments of being “satisfied on purpose.” Not because the work is perfect, but because it is what I could offer for this day. There will always be more work to do! Nonetheless, my nervous system needs practice in order to register what it tends to skip over – the sufficiency of the day.
I’m satisfied with what I did. I recorded two takes of a new video, inoculated 24 bags of lion’s mane, and cooked a great meal with food we grew on the farm. That is enough.
I think it’s important to speak this statement of satisfaction aloud. Writing it down has not been sufficient for me – I have kept a list of daily accomplishments to try to address this, but I haven’t seen any real benefit. My best guess, grounded in my explorations of Somatic Experiencing and group therapy work, is that speaking aloud functions as a kind of public declaration – especially compared to words hidden in a private notebook. I also think the externalized voice helps retrain the inner monologue, both in the speaking of the uncomfortable statement and hearing it fed back into your own ears.
Another element of the practice is to try to feel that satisfaction in my body as I say it, to let the truth land in my body. The practice is in finding the smallest seed of satisfaction, focusing attention on it, and giving it space to grow.
I notice, at least for now, the impulse to add “but” at the end – and noticing the pull of the old program is also part of the practice. I don’t need to silence or fight or obey that inner critic. I don’t need to solve planetary-scale problems in any given day. But I also don’t need to follow it down the same well-trod path.
I trust that, with time and practice, my default feeling will change. Small moments of satisfaction are taking root, even in the early days of the practice. I look forward to being surprised one day to realize that, “wow, I haven’t been dissatisfied with my work in weeks!”
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