>Since about 2020... There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses It

>Since about 2020... There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses It seems strange to disregard the pandemic merely because it didn't impact your work environment. It very likely impacted the ability to do any of their usual activities that took place outside of their home. And even if it didn't, having the entire world go through such a disaster is a reasonable possibility for a subtle or subconscious reactions. This may not at all have been the cause, but neither is it inconsistent with their eventual solution of drastically reducing news/media consumption. If the awful things going on in the world were in some way impacting motivation & productivity then it certainly makes sense that turning them off might help. Chalking up the mere possibility of that as "bogus excuses" is extremely dismissive for a global crisis as well, and a bit insulting to people who probably had identical issues that were very much linked to society shutting down combined w/ awful news creeping into any glance towards the outside world. The author's next statement of "“You’ve got to do something about that,” is the right attitude to take when faced with a problem of this sort, but a reason for a problem only becomes a "bogus excuse" if it's used to avoid trying to find a solution, not for its own sake.