[wiglaf1979]

I was in a similar rut. Not just professionally but academically as well for most of my life. Motivation had to be forced to do more than just enough to blend into the crowd. It took me saying enough is enough in my 40's to go get tested. Turns out I have ADHD. Getting therapy to deal with anxiety and depression stuff as well as getting on Adderall has done wonders.

I'm not suddenly working 40+ hours always in the zone. What has happened is that I've been better able to enjoy/engage with coworkers around helping them. Instead of feeling stuck and anxious, it's been easier to feel at ease at work and less fixated on metrics or usefulness. That engagement with my coworkers coupled with lowering how much effort was needed to do work that was previously seen as "busy" work has done wonders for my outlook about work.

In my case the benefit/problem of hyperfixation due to ADHD meant that when I had an interesting bit of work in front of me I could knock it out the park and it didn't feel like any effort. Those infrequent home runs were enough to make up for the times where I just couldn't be bothered to do other less interesting things. Didn't want to do them and because no one was asking me to do them it was ok that I didn't. Deep down I knew I was overcompensating in my strong areas to avoid the uninteresting items. This may not be you but if it is you may want to think on it. It's helped me outside of work as well. Parenting and dating.

[mylons]

thanks for posting this. I've been putting getting tested off for a long time. I don't think anyone ever suspected me of ADHD because even though I'd do the bare minimum in school I'd generally do well.

[borski]

Just added a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27596422

Figured I'd also comment it here since it has some useful resources that led me to get diagnosed and improve my life :)