Why everything feels hard, even when you’re doing nothing.

If you’re glued to your phone but somehow bored of everything on it. If starting simple tasks feels weirdly impossible.

You’re not rushing around. You’re not in constant crisis. You’re not even that busy. And yet everything feels hard.

Replying to a message takes more effort than it should. You open your laptop, stare at it, then reach for your phone without really knowing why. You try to rest, but resting doesn’t help. You’re tired, but stopping doesn’t feel good either.

From the outside, it can look like procrastination or laziness. From the inside, it feels like trying to move through wet cement.

Most people call this burnout, because that’s the word we’ve got. But burnout makes it sound like you ran out of fuel because you didn’t manage yourself properly, as if the fix is a better planner, firmer boundaries, or waking up at 5am to drink lemon water with intentions.

Honestly, no.

I appreciate the advice, but this is not going to help. Let me tell you why.

Burnout suggests exhaustion from effort. What many people are dealing with feels different. It’s not that there’s too much to do. It’s that starting feels unsafe, heavy, or strangely impossible, even when the task itself is simple. This isn’t a discipline problem, and it’s not a motivation issue either.

It’s often a nervous system response called freeze.

Freeze is what shows up when fight and flight didn’t work, when pushing harder didn’t bring relief and escaping wasn’t an option. So the body does the most sensible thing it can. It gets quiet. Very still. Very “if I don’t move, maybe nothing else will happen”.

From the outside, freeze looks like procrastination, numb scrolling, half-finished tasks, and opening the fridge six times without committing to anything. From the inside, it feels like being paused while the world keeps asking why you’re “so unmotivated lately”.

Your nervous system didn’t collapse. It adapted.

And here’s the part most advice misses. Your nervous system doesn’t care about your goals, your inbox, or your colour-coded task manager. It cares about one thing: is it safe to move again?

Right now, it’s not convinced.

That’s why advice like “just start small” or “push through it” can feel frustrating, if not insulting. Those suggestions assume your system is ready to mobilise. Freeze isn’t.

So instead of asking, “How do I get my motivation back?” it can help to ask a gentler question. What would make this feel five percent safer? Not better. Not fixed. Not productive. Just slightly less threatening.

Some things you can try that are not threatening to your nervous system could be standing up and stretching without turning it into a workout, letting your eyes wander around the room instead of drilling into a screen, stepping outside long enough for your body to notice daylight, or doing one absurdly small task on purpose and stopping while it still feels okay.

No glow-up. No comeback arc. Just proof to your body that movement doesn’t automatically equal danger.

If this is something you’re dealing with, you don’t have to figure it out alone. This is the kind of work I do with clients, gently exploring what safety could feel like again and letting the nervous system catch up.

You’re probably not lazy. You’re not broken. Your system has been protecting you for longer than anyone acknowledged.

That’s your inside perspective.