Motivation

Life – Terror. Ecstasy. Fight. Denial. Flight. Failure. PAIN. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Hope. Love. Peace – Death. 

The things that motivate us push us toward new heights and inspire us to keep going during challenging times. For many a cancer diagnosis is time to reflect on what they value most in life and to focus time and energy on what motivates them to look toward the future. That’s all very well but the reality is that the day-to-day activities that keep our lives together do not suddenly cease to be just because we have cancer. All those things that just ‘have to be done’, cooking, washing, cleaning and the dreaded DIY do not give a fuck that we have cancer. Problem is we did not want to do them before we had cancer imagine how ‘less’ we want to do them now?

How do you motivate yourself to continue to live, to enjoy life, despite having incurable cancer? Allow yourself time. Time to come to terms with dyeing. More importantly time to come to terms with living. Easier said than done.

Christmas Eve, my 8 year cancer anniversary. I thought I had cracked the enjoying life issue. Apparently not. The grim spectre is still there, largely, in the background I haven’t conquered it fully (yet). I doubt I ever will.

Some advise I have received that might help.

Have a consistent daily routine (good luck with that when you have worked the same job for 15 years and you suddenly find yourself ‘retired’). Make time each day for exercising, again, good luck with that when most of the time you are in varying degrees of pain, your life is pain, there is never ‘No’ pain. Getting enough sleep and eating meals. I tick that box successfully, most of the time. However, sleeping is also heavily reliant on pain levels (and other symptoms). Exercise and participating in activities that you enjoy also may help. I try to have fun, I do have fun. However, usually with ‘fun’ there is a physical cost. I only have the capacity to do ‘so much’?

Or do I? Or, is that just my cancer excuse? I have cancer, I must be tired?

Excuse or not, there’s no escaping boring tasks. While we all do our best to fill our personal [and professional] lives with engaging activities, there are countless menial, yet critical tasks that are required to keep our lives running. If I do not complete those tasks somebody else has to.

I do not want to (or I do not have enough energy) to have fun and accomplish essential activities? Truth is I would rather participate in having fun than complete mundane tasks no matter how essential they are. That means somebody does them for me.

I try to spend my days, now I am retired and I do not have any work schedule, doing things that feel engaging — however, the reality is, there’s always boring work that must also be done. Whether it’s washing the dishes, ‘life administration’, the seemingly countless menial, yet critical, tasks that keep our homes and communities running. We all have less-than-exciting tasks we have to do.

Of course, it’s not easy to persevere in these tasks, even if we know we should. We do however, have choices? Is cancer my justification for my choice not to? What does it take to persist, to carry on with the mundane when time is short and there is always something ‘better’ to do?

Researchers have explored this question from many angles, seeking to understand how we can cultivate perseverance in ourselves and in those we care about. Studies have shown that people may persist longer when a task is made more fun. Nothing fun about housework me thinks?

Recent research, however, suggests that for tasks that don’t require a lot of attention, there may be a better approach. In many cases, people stop working on tasks prematurely not because they aren’t motivated enough, but because the tasks inherently do not demand enough attention. You can only make washing the dishes so exciting or intellectually stimulating. Rather than attempting to make boring tasks less boring, it can sometimes be more effective instead to pair these activities with other tasks that demand more attention. This is called concept tangential immersion.

Why does this work?

Fundamentally, the mind seeks to be engaged. We experience boredom and dissatisfaction when doing tasks that require less attention than we have available, and this leads us to resent, resist or even quit those tasks prematurely. But if there is a second activity in which we can immerse ourselves concurrently with the low-attention task, it can occupy that excess attention, reducing boredom and thus increasing persistence.

A simple experiment designed to measure the impact of tangential immersion on how long participants brush their teeth was conducted. Participants were pre-informed that the longer they brushed, the cleaner their teeth would be, and then instructed them to brush for as long as they wanted. While they brushed, one group was shown a video clip of beautiful nature scenes accompanied by music and nature sounds, while the other group watched a much more immersive documentary video clip about bears and wolves. This small intervention made a big difference: On average, those who watched the more immersive video brushed their teeth 30% longer than those who watched the less immersive video.

In comparing tangential immersion to some of the other common approaches to increasing persistence. In one study, three groups of participants performed a simple physical exercise for as long as they could while concurrently doing a second activity: The control group looked at a dot moving across a screen, the second group looked at a pleasant underwater image and listened to piano music, and the third group read an immersive story. The participants who read an immersive story while doing the exercise persisted for 10% longer than those in the control group, whereas looking at a beautiful image accompanied by pleasant, but non-immersive music did not increase persistence (despite participants rating the experience as more enjoyable).

A supplemental study, compared tangential immersion to progress monitoring by asking participants to do a simple typing task for as long as they could. Providing participants with a timer to track their progress increased persistence in the typing task — suggesting that monitoring your progress does indeed help — but we found that listening to an immersive audiobook increased persistence even more.

Finally, two additional studies explored a key limitation of this approach: People can really only pay attention to so much at one time. Because of this, tangential immersion only increases persistence if the two tasks together occupy most of — but not more than — one’s total attentional (and physical)? capacity. Listening to an immersive audiobook boosted persistence for the simple typing task but when participants were asked to do a similar yet slightly more complex typing task, tangential immersion had no effect. Similarly, participants doing a simple physical exercise persisted longer when reading an immersive story, but not when performing attention-demanding arithmetic.

So how can individuals leverage tangential immersion? Many people already demonstrate an intuitive understanding of this effect in their personal lives — for instance, listening to immersive music or podcasts while performing menial house work activities, or at the gym during a boring workout is an example of real-world tangential immersion.

There’s no escaping boring tasks. Of course, we should all do what we can to fill our lives with engaging activities — but given the prevalence and importance of low-attention work in our personal and professional lives (and the lives of our loved ones/partners) we all stand to benefit from finding ways to persist in these behaviours.

What does cancer fatigue feel like?

The fatigue felt by people with cancer is different from the fatigue of daily life and different from the tired feeling people might remember having before they had cancer. People with cancer might describe it as feeling very weak, listless, drained, or “washed out” that may decrease for a while but then comes back, sometimes unexpectedly.

People with advanced cancer are more likely to have fatigue than those with earlier stage cancer. Some medics suggest this could be because there are more cancer cells in the body, so the cancer itself is causing you to feel tired. My cancer causes swelling in certain parts of the body (legs, ankles, feet) making my limbs heavier and harder to move. I also have a reduced number of red blood cells that causes changes in hormone levels, which can cause tiredness.

What type of cancer causes the most fatigue?

Cancers of the prostate and breast interfere with metabolic and hormonal processes causing extreme tiredness in the patient. All cancers produce a high amount of cytokines that are natural cell proteins that are normally released by the white blood cells in response to infection. When you have other complications, such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, chronic psoriasis (extreme itching) plus, a fucked up immune system (taking immune system diminishing medications) the prognosis for fatigue is not great.

8 years in I do feel more tired than I did two, three years ago.

My physical capacity has diminished. What were once relatively minor physical exertions, climbing stairs, walking briskly are no longer so to me. Does that make my ‘life’ choices easier? Not really, but it definitely makes things harder for others.

Things have changed. My way forward. I must reassess my own capabilities, to establish my current limits and, if required, adjust my choices to establish a rest of life balance that works for those around me as well as myself.

What if, at the end of this life, the question was; ‘did you use your suffering as an excuse to make others suffer even more than yourself’?

Thanks for Reading

Peace