Languishing: The Feeling of "Blah" and How to Move Through It

Languishing is the name for a life that feels flat, joyless and aimless when nothing is clinically wrong: you are not depressed, but you are not doing well either. The sociologist Corey Keyes defined it in 2002 as the absence of positive mental health, a state of emptiness and stagnation. In his analysis of a national US survey, languishing was about as common as an episode of major depression, and it came with real costs in daily life and at work.¹ Because languishing is not an illness, the first ways out of it are ordinary ones: a protected block of time, something absorbing, a record of small wins and regular contact with people.

Weeks of blah are different from one flat afternoon. For the afternoon, try the guide to getting motivated when you feel flat; for the weeks, read on, or browse more on motivation and low energy.

What does languishing mean?

Languishing means having low positive mental health without having a mental illness. In Corey Keyes’s 2002 framework, mental health is a cluster of good feelings and good functioning, and a person who lacks most of it is languishing even if they would pass a depression screening.

Keyes built the idea like a diagnosis, from a set of symptoms, except that these are signs of health. Some are feelings, such as being satisfied with life. Others are about functioning: having a direction, growing, managing daily life, and feeling you belong and contribute. Someone low on the feelings and on most of the functioning is languishing; Keyes likened it to lives people describe as hollow or empty.¹

Take someone who goes to work, sees friends now and then and sleeps well enough. Nothing is wrong enough to mention to a doctor, but the weeks blur and “fine” is the most honest answer they have.

The opposite of languishing is flourishing: feeling good about life and functioning well, in your own life and with other people. Most adults in his study sat between the two, in what Keyes called moderate mental health.¹ Our guide to the PERMA model of flourishing covers that end of the scale.

What is the difference between languishing and depression?

Depression is a mental illness with its own symptoms; languishing is the absence of good mental health. Keyes argued that the two sit on separate but related scales, and a 2011 study of a representative Dutch panel of 1,662 people supported that two-scale model, so a person can be free of depression and still languishing.²

A fact sheet from the World Health Organization gives depression a time line that languishing lacks: in a depressive episode, a depressed mood, or lost pleasure or interest, fills most of each day, almost daily, for at least two weeks, plus symptoms such as trouble concentrating, broken sleep or hopelessness.³ Languishing is defined by what is missing, and Keyes’s cut-offs were statistical, with no rule about how long the state has to last.¹

Picture two colleagues. One has felt hopeless for a month; the other gets everything done, sleeps fine and feels nothing much about any of it. The first needs a doctor. The second fits languishing.

Nor is languishing burnout. In WHO’s classification, burnout is an occupational phenomenon: the product of chronic stress at work that was never successfully managed, and a term meant for work alone.⁴ Languishing follows you home, and you can languish with plenty of energy.

Up: more positive mental health. Right: more symptoms of mental illness.

1. Flourishing: high well-being, few symptoms of mental illness
2. Languishing: low well-being, few symptoms: the "blah" zone
3. Languishing with a mental illness: low well-being and symptoms, the hardest place to be
4. Mental illness, well-being intact: symptoms, yet moderate or high well-being

The scales still touch. In Keyes’s 2002 data, languishing adults were more likely than flourishing adults to have had major depression in the past year, and people who had both reported the most trouble of anyone.¹ Languishing is not a mild form of depression, and it is no safe place to stay either, so check yourself on both questions.

Myth

If you are not depressed, your mental health is fine.

Fact

Keyes's research treats mental health and mental illness as separate scales: you can have no illness and still be languishing.

What are the signs of languishing?

The signs of languishing are absences rather than symptoms: weeks in which you rarely feel happy, interested or satisfied, and rarely feel that you are growing, managing well or part of something. Researchers measure them with Keyes’s Mental Health Continuum Short Form, 14 questions about how often you felt each one in the past month, from “never” to “every day”.

Three questions cover good feelings, such as feeling happy; six cover psychological well-being, such as handling daily responsibilities; and five cover social well-being, such as feeling you have something to contribute to society. You count as languishing if at least one good feeling came “never” or “once or twice” in the month, and the same held for at least six of the other eleven. The rule needs lows in feelings and in functioning together, so someone who feels low but is still growing and connected would not count. The questionnaire travels, too: it has shown good measurement properties in studies from Argentina and Egypt to India, Korea and the Netherlands.⁵

Adam Grant, who brought the word to a wide audience, adds signs he noticed in friends, colleagues and family: trouble concentrating, little excitement about the year ahead and late nights rewatching a film already known by heart.⁶

In a random sample of 1,050 Setswana-speaking adults in South Africa, about 12 percent were languishing, close to the share Keyes found in the US.⁷ The questionnaire is still a research tool, not a diagnosis, and its cut-offs are a convention.

If both answers are “rarely”, take that seriously, but a questionnaire cannot rule out depression or anything else; only a professional can.

How do you stop languishing?

No trial we found has tested a remedy on people selected for languishing, but research on flow, progress and social connection points to five low-risk habits. That research is mostly observational and did not select people who were languishing, so think of each step as a small experiment rather than a proven fix. If you are being treated for depression or another condition, keep that care going; these steps add to it, never replace it.

1. Give the feeling a name

Calling it languishing, rather than laziness, is the first step Grant suggests: a name, he wrote, could make the experience clearer and remind you it is common.⁶ Nobody has tested this for languishing itself. Next time a friend asks how you are, try “a bit blah, honestly” instead of “fine”.

2. Guard one block of uninterrupted time

Grant also suggests protecting uninterrupted time, because constant switching leaves little room to get absorbed in anything. His example is a software company in India that tested interruption-free mornings; our guide to time blocking looks at that study and its limits.⁶

Pick one or two mornings a week, or whatever slot your job and caring duties allow, block them in your calendar and silence the phone if you can. The aim is to give your attention one place to settle.

3. Look for something absorbing

Flow, deep absorption in a challenging activity, is what Grant calls a possible antidote to languishing, and one study fits part of that. In a February 2020 survey of 5,115 people in Wuhan and other Chinese cities hit early by COVID-19, those who reported more flowflow state: Complete absorption in a challenging task, with action and awareness merging, less self-consciousness and time seeming to pass differently. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named it; it tends to appear when a task stretches your skills and gives clear feedback.Full entry in the glossary showed little or no link between a longer quarantine and poorer well-being.⁸ The survey was cross-sectionalcross-sectional: Describes a study that measures everyone in its sample at a single point in time. Because the possible cause and the outcome are recorded together, it can show that two things occur together but not which of them came first.Full entry in the glossary, so cause and effect cannot be separated, and the authors note that distress may also make flow harder to reach.

Pick one activity that stretches you a little, such as a hard puzzle or an instrument. Our guide to getting into a flow state explains what makes an activity absorbing.

4. Notice small wins

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer had 238 knowledge workers in seven companies keep daily diaries, and concluded that of everything that lifted emotions and motivation on a workday, progress in meaningful work mattered most, even when the step forward was small.⁹ The diaries came from creative project teams, so the finding fits work better than life in general.

Before bed, write one line about something that moved forward, however small.

5. Stay in touch with people

Five of the 14 questions that define languishing ask about social well-being, so connection may be part of the way out.⁵ The WHO Commission on Social Connection reported in 2025 that social connection can protect health and support mental health, while loneliness affects about 1 in 6 people worldwide.¹⁰ If you have drifted from people, our guide to loneliness has steps for reconnecting.

Choose one low-effort, regular contact, such as a weekly call.

Pick two for the coming week

• Name the feeling to one person I trust
• Book one uninterrupted block with the phone silenced
• Spend time on something that stretches me a little
• Write one line a day about something that moved forward
• Set up one regular, low-effort contact with someone

Does languishing matter if you are not ill?

It does in Keyes’s research: languishing went with poorer emotional health, more limits on daily activities and more lost workdays, and a ten-year follow-up linked falling well-being with later mental illness. Both studies are observational and draw on one US survey, so they point to links rather than causes.

The study

Moderate evidence

Not ill, not well: what a 1995 US survey of 3,032 adults found

In the 1995 Midlife in the United States survey of 3,032 adults aged 25 to 74, about 12 percent were languishing without a depressive episode, about 17 percent were flourishing, and just over half were moderately mentally healthy. About 14 percent had had an episode of major depression in the past year. Languishing adults reported poorer emotional health, more limits on daily activities and more workdays lost or cut back for mental health reasons.¹

A sizable minority of adults were not ill but were doing poorly, and it showed in their days. Keyes himself points out that people were surveyed once, so the data cannot say whether languishing leads to lost workdays or the reverse.

A follow-up of 1,723 of the same adults, surveyed again in 2005, adds hope. Half of those languishing in 1995 had improved by 2005, and people whose well-being rose were less likely to have a mental illness in 2005, while those whose well-being fell were more likely to.¹¹ So a long run of blah is worth acting on.

Why everyone started saying “languishing” in 2021

The word went mainstream in April 2021, when the organizational psychologist Adam Grant wrote in The New York Times that languishing might be the dominant emotion of the year. According to a 2022 analysis by the anthropologist Sarah Willen, the column became the most-read New York Times story of 2021.¹²

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness.

Grant argued that as the pandemic dragged into its second year, acute anguish gave way to a chronic dullness many people could not name, though he admitted that much about its causes is still unknown. He also wrote that languishing lives in our circumstances as well as our heads.⁶

Willen also warns that positive psychology’s focus on individual behavior change can neglect the conditions that make some people languish and others flourish.¹² So use the word as a description, not a diagnosis, and look at your situation (workload, isolation, money worries) as well as your habits.

When the blah needs a doctor

Two weeks is the line to remember. If you have felt down, or lost interest in things, for most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more, WHO’s fact sheet would call it a possible depressive episode, and a doctor should look at it.³ The NHS in the UK uses the same two weeks and lists signs such as hopelessness, no enjoyment in life and trouble concentrating on everyday things.¹³

Asking for help is a step out of languishing, not a sign of failing at it.

The bottom line

Languishing is common, it is not a diagnosis, and it can lift, so a long run of blah is worth acting on early. Pick two of the five steps for the coming week, such as one protected block of time and one regular contact. Once flatness turns into two weeks or more of feeling down or losing interest, book a doctor; in a crisis, the local emergency number comes first.