lol, maybe. Or mayyyyyybe you just have a heightened awareness of worker exploitation and recognize that, objectively, the huge majority of jobs that we are forced to do are garbage. And that rubs off on your coworkers as you slowly, subtly radicalize them.

Usually I think I get really restless and bored of the job if there isn’t a lot of creative control/variation in it. after a time I start to self sabotage. It’s baffling to me how people can keep the same work for decades, I don’t think I could do that if I tried.

Are you me haha? Seeing some people who have stayed at one company for decades is baffling, I don’t know how anyone can do it.

I work in a relatively cushy office job doing sales which adds a lot of dissonance on top of the burnout. It should be, and is, an easy job, especially for the money, and hearing the struggles of others making significantly less makes me wish I could just give them my job. I know other people would be able to do it just as well with no prior experience, appreciate the income more than I do, and keep up with the work. You pretty much hit the nail on the head for me. Most of these places are very specific about how you go about your job, or at least where I’ve been, and you’d think the constant variation in new customers would be a nice variation, but it ends up being the same scripts, cycles, and products day in and out and at the end of every month, you’ve done nothing beneficial for the world and have created nothing. It’s made me realize my privilege in not being motivated by money more than anything.

My partner used to do something similar and it took a pretty hefty toll on them. I’m always amazed at how people are able to keep up working in jobs like those in our society. The pay disparity alone between them and me is a clear indication of how sick we are as a society.

I went to try and find that study now and the search results are now a combination of “it’s actually good to take short vacations” and “bosses, don’t let your employees take too long of a vacation”

What I try to do is recognize the behavior when it’s happening without judging it. Instead of getting annoyed with myself when I realize I somehow ended up scrolling again, I just remind myself that this isn’t what I want to be doing and put the phone down. I’ll probably pick it up again in five minutes, but everytime I put it down the habit becomes just a tiny bit more ingrained.

I’m still here in the middle of a work day so it obviously isn’t a perfect system, but I’m trying to focus on the process instead of getting frustrated on the days when I don’t get results.