What am I being paid for? (postdoc) I am currently doing a postdoc in mathematics in Europe (staying vague for anonymity...). For various reasons I am seriously considering leaving academia at the end of my current postdoc, which ends in a few months. I have some teaching/supervision left to do, but very little. My postdoc is a more research-focused postdoc, but not within any specific project, I am free to work on whatever projects interest me.

For the last few months I have been feeling extremely unmotivated to do anything related to my research. No one seems to care whether I'm doing something or not and it will most likely not have any impact whatsoever on my future career outside of academia anyway. The coronavirus situation with the requirements to work from home obviously didn't improve the situation, as I lost the peer pressure of having office mates so I don't even feel the need to pretend that I'm working anymore. Yet I am of course still being paid, but it makes me feel quite bad to be paid for doing essentially nothing.

I guess I am looking for advice for how to feel better, either by regaining some motivation, or simply by hearing that it is ok to not do research (or any other kind of related work) if I don't feel like it. I'm not sure if it's a form of the impostor syndrome, but I definitely feel like a fraud for not working and still getting a salary...
Research is a very non-linear process, where long stretches of work may produce not much of value (even though you have learned a lot!).
If you're planning on leaving academia this presents a problem, because you might not actually produce anything before you leave, and it's understandably difficult to motivate yourself to work on something you plan on dropping midway through.
Therefore, I would advise you to focus on projects that are likely to pay off before you leave. Of course without specifics it's hard to come up with examples, but I'll take a crack anyway.


Find a colleague who can benefit from your expertise and help them out.
Reach out and see if you can give some talks about the research you've already completed.
Volunteer and take over some teaching from a colleague.
Expand your (digital) office hours.


Lastly, you've probably spent a good amount of free time doing research anyway, so I wouldn't feel too bad about taking the occasional workday off to do something other than work. (Perhaps figure out what you're going to be doing next.)