Introduction
When you don't feel motivated, but you have to get motivated anyway, how do you push yourself into gear?
Maybe, there's a deadline and someone's waiting on you, or you told yourself you'd finish it today. In those cases, you literally have to do it. If it didn't matter, you could just go back to sleep, but some days that isn't an option.
So people do something first. Clean the desk, sort through the task list, meditate, go for a run — the idea of doing something like these to get yourself going is common enough advice.
However, I recently noticed these all have something in common. Or rather, they all rest on a fatal assumption.
It's this: anything you do to get motivated takes motivation. There's a contradiction built into it.
Using Motivation to Make Motivation?
When you think about it, it's obvious.
Cleaning your desk means using your body. Sorting your tasks means deciding what to keep and what to drop. Meditating means sitting still and holding yourself together, and running speaks for itself. All of them are easy — if you're already motivated.
So the things offered as fixes for having no motivation require motivation as a prerequisite. You've got nothing in the tank, you decide to do something about it, you start to get moving. Then you realize even that something feels like too much, and now you feel worse. That's the spin.
The interesting one is resting. Resting doesn't take any motivation. It's the one option that costs you nothing.
Conclusion
I'll admit it, the reason I wrote this is that I'm in exactly that state right now. I was going to write about something else today, but I couldn't get going, and then I started thinking about motivation and ended up here instead 😅.
Back to the question I opened with. I don't think there's one reliable answer that works for everyone. But one possibility worth considering: maybe the more you want to get motivated, the more it pays to not rush into anything, and just rest without a plan.
Of course, sometimes cleaning or exercise or meditation really does flip the switch. If you're in a state where you can move, that's the fastest way there is. It's just that some days you don't even have that much in you, and on those days, reaching for the same tricks can leave you spinning.
That said, some people can't sit still doing nothing. If that's you, getting one thing done that doesn't take any motivation might be about right. Something with no decisions in it, with the steps already laid out, with a clear finish. It won't bring your motivation back, but at least it won't drain you further.
Now, at work there are situations where you don't have the luxury of taking it slow. But on the days when you do, forcing yourself to get fired up just wears you down that much more. When you catch that feeling coming on, maybe taking the long view is what gets you back to normal sooner after all.
Thanks for reading.
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