In April, the organisational psychologist Adam Grant wrote a column in The New York Times with a title that seemed to describe half the people he knew: "There's a Name for the Blah You're Feeling: It's Called Languishing". It quickly became one of the paper's most widely shared pieces this spring.
The term is not new. The sociologist Corey Keyes, at Emory University, introduced it in 2002 to describe a state that is neither mental illness nor mental health: you are not depressed, but you are not thriving either. Days blur together. Motivation is low. You get through the to-do list without much joy, and you are not sure what you are looking forward to.
After more than a year of lockdowns, cancelled plans and screens, that description fits many people. And now, as vaccination programmes expand and parts of the world start to reopen, many of us are discovering that the blah does not lift as quickly as the restrictions.
This post looks at what languishing is, what the evidence says about wellbeing during the pandemic, and what research suggests actually helps.
1. The mental health continuum
Keyes's key idea is that mental health is not just the absence of mental illness. He describes two separate dimensions: whether someone has symptoms of a mental disorder, and how well they are functioning and feeling. Someone can have no diagnosis and still be doing badly.
| State | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Flourishing | Feeling good about life and functioning well: purpose, growth, good relationships, a sense of contributing |
| Moderately mentally healthy | Doing fine, without either strong wellbeing or marked struggle |
| Languishing | Emptiness and stagnation, "quiet despair", without meeting the criteria for depression |
| Depression and other disorders | Clinical symptoms that need professional care |
Keyes's research found that languishing is not harmless. In his studies, people who were languishing had more lost work days and more emotional distress than people who were flourishing, and were at higher risk of developing depression later. Grant's point was that a name helps: it is easier to address something you can describe, and it helps people realise they are not alone.
One caution. Languishing is not a diagnosis, and it should not be used to dismiss real depression or anxiety. If low mood lasts for weeks, interferes with daily life or comes with thoughts of self-harm, that is a reason to talk to a doctor, not to read another blog post.
2. What the World Happiness Report 2021 found
The World Happiness Report, published every March, ranks countries by how people rate their lives on a scale from 0 to 10, using data from the Gallup World Poll. This year's edition focused on the effects of COVID-19.
A few findings stand out:
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| Rankings were remarkably stable | Finland ranked first for the fourth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands |
| Emotions moved more than life evaluations | Negative emotions such as worry and sadness rose in many countries in 2020, while overall life satisfaction was more resilient |
| Trust was the key factor | Countries with higher trust in public institutions and in each other did better, both in wellbeing and in containing COVID-19 deaths |
| Social connection mattered | People who lost contact with friends and family, or who lived alone, were hit harder |
This distinction between how we feel day to day and how we judge our lives overall matches the languishing experience. Many people would say their life is reasonably good. They just do not feel much while living it.
The trust finding is also worth noting. Wellbeing is not only a matter of personal habits. It depends on whether we trust our neighbours, our employers and our governments, and whether we feel we are in something together.
3. Why the pandemic produces languishing
Most explanations come down to the loss of things that normally keep us engaged.
- Fewer goals and milestones. Holidays, weddings, trips, promotions and other markers of progress were postponed. Without them, weeks feel the same.
- Less variety. The same rooms, the same screens, the same routines. Novelty is one of the things that makes time feel full.
- Fewer small interactions. Brief chats with colleagues, neighbours and shop staff seem trivial, but research suggests they give a real boost to mood and a sense of belonging.
- Chronic, low-level uncertainty. Not knowing when things will end makes it hard to plan, and hard to commit to anything.
- Constant partial attention. Many people's days are now a stream of notifications and video calls, with little time for deep focus on anything.
None of these are personal failings. They are the predictable result of removing many of the ordinary ingredients of a good life at the same time.
4. What helps: evidence-based antidotes
The research on wellbeing is not as definitive as some books suggest, but several findings have held up well over the years.
Flow
Grant's main recommendation was flow, the state of complete absorption in a challenging but manageable task, described by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. People tend to report their best moments not while relaxing, but while fully engaged in something that stretches them a little. Flow needs uninterrupted time. Protecting even one or two hours a day without notifications is one of the simplest things you can do.
Small wins
Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer analysed nearly 12,000 diary entries from knowledge workers and found that the single biggest booster of a good day at work was making progress on meaningful work, even in small steps. They called it the progress principle. When the big milestones are gone, the small ones matter more. Set goals you can finish today and notice when you do.
Connection
Relationships are the most consistent predictor of wellbeing across decades of research. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed its participants since 1938, is often quoted for its conclusion that close relationships matter more for long-term health and happiness than wealth or fame. During the pandemic, many relationships have shrunk to a household and a group chat. Reaching out, especially to people you have lost touch with, is worth the awkwardness.
Time over things
Research by Ashley Whillans and colleagues suggests that people who spend money to buy time, for example by paying for help with chores they dislike, report higher life satisfaction than people who spend the same amount on material goods. More generally, people who value time over money tend to be happier. After a year in which the line between work and home disappeared, reclaiming time may matter more than any purchase.
Helping others
Acts of kindness and generosity are associated with higher wellbeing, and several experiments have found that spending money on others makes people happier than spending it on themselves. Helping also gives a sense of purpose, which is exactly what languishing lacks.
5. What does not help much
Some popular advice has weaker evidence than it sounds.
- "Just be positive." Forcing positive feelings and suppressing negative ones tends to backfire. Naming emotions accurately, including "languishing", is more useful than pretending to be fine.
- Maximising productivity. Filling every hour with self-improvement can become another source of pressure. Rest is not wasted time.
- Waiting for things to go back to normal. Reopening will help, but it will not automatically restore energy and purpose. The habits we build now will carry over.
6. What managers and teams can do
Languishing is not only a personal issue. It shows up at work as low energy, slower decisions and quiet disengagement. Managers have more influence over it than they might think.
- Create room for flow. Protect blocks of focus time for the team. Fewer meetings, fewer interruptions.
- Make progress visible. Celebrate small, concrete achievements in team meetings. Show people where their work goes and who it helps.
- Restart rituals. Many teams stopped the small social rituals that gave the week a shape. Bring some back, online or in person.
- Talk about it. Simply saying "a lot of people are feeling flat right now, and that is normal" can make it easier for someone to ask for help.
- Encourage real breaks. A holiday at home is still a holiday. Make sure people take their time off and do not answer messages while they are away.
- Know when to refer. Make sure people know what support is available, such as employee assistance programmes, and that using it is not a black mark.
7. A short personal checklist
- [ ] Name it. Are you depressed, burnt out or languishing? They need different responses.
- [ ] Block one hour a day for a single, absorbing task.
- [ ] Set one small goal each day that you can finish.
- [ ] Contact one person this week you have not talked to in months.
- [ ] Do one thing for someone else, with no expectation of return.
- [ ] Plan something to look forward to, even if it is small and local.
- [ ] If low mood persists or gets worse, talk to a professional.
Why this matters
- Not being ill is not the same as being well. Mental health is a spectrum, and many people are in the middle without knowing it has a name.
- Languishing has costs. It is linked to lost work days, lower engagement and a higher risk of later depression.
- Wellbeing is social. Trust and connection are among its strongest predictors, which means organisations and communities share responsibility for it.
- The basics are well understood. Absorption, progress, relationships, time and generosity have decades of evidence behind them.
Final Thoughts
There is a temptation to see the reopening as the end of the problem. Restrictions lift, offices fill, and we go back to how things were. But the past year has shown many people something uncomfortable: that a life can look fine from the outside and still feel empty from the inside, and that some of the things that kept us engaged before were more fragile than we thought.
The good news is that the opposite of languishing is not a dramatic transformation. It is mostly ordinary things done deliberately: time to focus, small wins, people we care about, and the feeling of being useful to someone. Those are worth building back on purpose rather than waiting for them to return by themselves.
Sources
- Adam Grant, "There's a Name for the Blah You're Feeling: It's Called Languishing", The New York Times (April 19, 2021).
- Corey L. M. Keyes, "The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life", Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43(2) (2002).
- John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (eds.), World Happiness Report 2021, Sustainable Development Solutions Network (March 19, 2021).
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper and Row (1990).
- Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, Harvard Business Review Press (2011).
- Robert Waldinger, What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness, TED (2015), on the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
- Ashley V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Paul Smeets, Rene Bekkers and Michael I. Norton, "Buying time promotes happiness", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(32) (2017).
- Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin and Michael I. Norton, "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness", Science 319(5870) (2008).