Shallow Work Emptiness

The opposite of deep work satisfaction

There’s a feeling of intense, inward satisfaction I get at dusk if I've worked hard during the day. It seems to say, ‘My purpose for today was served.’ It feels like meaning, the same one people talk about when they say they want their life to mean something. I feel content and free to spend the rest of the evening any way I want, guilt free.

The work I did could be anything - the only criteria is that I spent a few hours deeply focused on a task that was intellectually challenging. Usually this involves either coding, designing, or writing. It doesn’t matter whether the work was done for a personal project or for school or as part of a job, just that it was done sincerely (rare), willingly (rarer), and without interruption (unheard of). It’s easy; it’s just impossible.

Deep work is so important to have a fulfilling life, and yet I don’t do it regularly. I’m writing this only to remind myself that it’s worth not giving in to your brain’s thousand dopamine requests every minute, just to earn the gratification of having done something worthwhile at the end of the day. This feeling is so innate, there has to be an evolutionary aspect to it.

On the flip side, when I don’t do anything challenging on a particular day, at night I get a feeling of emptiness so strong that it’s maddening. It doesn't hurt, and it’s not quite guilt either. It’s as if an itch inside my head didn't get scratched, and I can no longer scratch it anymore. It’s a mixture of dissatisfaction, hopelessness, guilt, and annoyance, but mostly annoyance, and mostly at myself.

On such days, even at night I have to find ways to “be productive”, to make up for all the time I wasted. I keep thinking of more things I can get done before going to bed. My mind is never at rest. But at that point I’m usually mentally checked out, so it’s hard to get in the zone, and so I neither get anything done nor have fun in peace. No amount of entertainment and escapism can make up for this emptiness. Like I said, it’s not painful, but I can sense my entire body telling me that this feeling is something inherently negative. There has to be an evolutionary aspect to it.

Of course, the two feelings are on opposite ends of a spectrum with me swinging somewhere in between. But as long as the days where I get a sense of deep work satisfaction outnumber those with the dreaded feeling of shallow work emptiness, I’d say life’s pretty good.

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