Ask HN: How to do that you need to do but not motivated at all?
variations of this question would be how to stop procrastination, how to be disciplined, how to be productive...
Some days it's better, but those are when my sleep goes REALLY well... but that's like having motivation, not everyday is gonna be a perfect day, it'd be really advantageous to be able to maintain a good amount of momentum consistently.
142 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadUsually once I start a task the desire to procrastination abates.
No one is motivated to do stuff 100% of the time. Do you think superstar athletes like getting in the weight room and doing cardio everyday?
I think a lot of the problem is that modern life allows people to have this attitude when it wasn't an option in the past. No one used to care about whether they wanted to do stuff because if they didn't they would die.
"Oh I don't feel like getting firewood or hunting today" - Dead Caveman
The author has a book called Tiny Habits. It's short, but packs a bunch. Essentially: (B)ehavior = (M)otivation + (A)bility + (P)rompt.
Edit: Direct link to the paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19LYba4fuceGM3KhqxTXByV4msmb...
Imagine not understanding basic things about your environment like: why wife die of sick, why sky open and pour ocean, etc.
Now imagine how terrifying and demotivating that type of thing must have been.
The point is that until very recently no one had the luxury of sitting around and worrying whether they felt "motivated" to do things. They just did them because they didn't have a choice if they wanted to survive.
"OH I feel like shit and don't want to get off my ass today" ok.... it doesn't really matter. Still need wood for heat, need to cook, need to feed my pigs etc.
Yeah you can get away with doing essentially nothing now and still survive but people need to change their mindset and form a habit that doing nothing long term results in a very unhealthy lifestyle. Simplify your day into just doing SOMETHING and remove that anxiety of having too many choices. Pick one and go.
You can find rewarding work.
Seems like a big assumption. I haven't yet, and I keep trying.
I know from experience that I'm happiest doing 2-3 part time jobs. But in order to get things like benefits, job security, a salary over 15/hr, etc. I'm stuck with a single place of full time employment. I try to find jobs that let me do a bunch of different things, but it's not really the same.
Being a generalist sucks.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-ha...
What Removal of choice in practice looks like is going to the gym in the morning isn't a choice, it's just what I have to do. In the same way that going to work on the weekdays isn't a choice, it's what you have to do.
As for removing small obstacles, getting to the gym early in the morning is hard. When you wake up early it is extremely tempting to stay in the comfort of you bed or scroll social media while you have your coffee, or [insert easy dopamine hit here]. I have my gym bag packed, my coffee machine set so all I have to do is hit the brew button, my whey/creatine powder is in the mixer bottle, and (recently) I've cleaned the snow off my car, in the evening. This is so when I wake up weak willed, it's as easy as I can possibly make it to follow through on my intention.
For baby steps, when instituting a new habit from motivation, make it easy, like really really easy. The gym habit is a new one for me this year. I started building it by simply setting the intention that I would show up to the gym for a couple minutes. No pressure to work out, no pressure to get fit, the only requirement on myself was that I spend 2 minutes at the gym on my 'workout' days. This helped build and lock in a routine and notice the small obstacles that I needed to overcome to get to the gym. As the habit of going got locked in, it became trivially easy to be like well I guess while I'm here I'll do some curls.
I have issues building habits where people say do it for 21 days and then you’ll start loving and “will do it for the rest of your life”.
No you won’t.
Sometimes you won’t feel like doing it, even if it’s your habit.
What keeps you going is discipline.
Regardless of the external circumstances, whether it’s cold, raining, you didn’t sleep enough or you feel sad, you still do it.
That’s the basis behind the 75 Hard too. I say it’s not a fitness program, it’s a mental toughness program, you do what you agreed to do.
I can't say I've been able to apply it to everything in my life. Certain things like working out and meditating I've finally been able to make it something that's not a choice. It's pretty much like drinking water or taking a dump. It just has to be done now.
a) do things for an quick and clear reward
b) always be in extremely well defined rules (when semester starts you see how people obsess over edge cases and their impact on grade with a professor)
c) always do it for pleasing someone else and get their admiration (teachers, parents, peers, etc)
d) only be motivated by fear
In a way the better you adapt to that system the more 'slave' minded you become and only do what is asked, when rewarded, given clear instructions and a threat of leashes is near. Often Top students in HS end up mediocre at college and life.
Lack of motivation plagues them all life as they have no clear guidelines, external threats, or third person providing validation.
While the real reward is admission to a good college, you get the feeling that you are progressing towards that goal often.
It's unhealthy, but I get a great deal of satisfaction when I think about others seeing me as a success. And a great deal of stress when things aren't going right, which has been a motivator for turning things around.
If at some point I fail and can't recover, my mental health would probably decline significantly.
Cardio eventually feels good. The physical response to working out is endorphines which make our monkey brains feel good after.
Mentally exhausting work on the other hand is far more delayed than that.
> "Oh I don't feel like getting firewood or hunting today" - Dead Caveman
Both of those have both immediate and delayed rewards.
Stress can be a healthy motivator, but it's generally unhealthy for stress and immediate survival to be your only motivator. Be very careful about over-relying on stress. Besides the physical effects, stress can also sometimes lead to sacrificing long-term habits that aren't immediately necessary but that are still important to build (exercise, career building, relationships, sleep, etc...).
There are two pieces of advice here that (in my opinion) are kind of contradictory:
- form habits (good advice)
- "no one used to care about whether they wanted to do stuff because if they didn't they would die" (this is a recipe for burnout, regardless of how well it might work for someone in the short term).
A good habit usually should not be stressful, it shouldn't be something you do out of persistent fear. There is something to the idea of having stimuli/motivators around chores that are difficult to ignore, lots of people benefit from that kind of setup. But... not because you're worried about dying if you don't do them.
Motivation is typically short lived, building discipline allows you to not be subject to its fickle nature. (some people call it habit, I call it discipline)
"How do I do X when I don't have Y?"
"You do X even though you don't have Y."
"Okay, but how? My problem is that if I don't have Y, I don't do X."
"Well just do X without Y, and then you won't have that problem."
"Right but..."
"You know the problem you have? Stop having it. Then you won't have it."
2) Break your tasks into sub-tasks, and consider the breaking-apart a task in itself.
3) Timebox solving an appropriate amount of sub-tasks at the right time.
I'm supposed to "redo my budget" -- but that's not actionable. What's actionable and simple is prepare a spreadsheet in the right folder, download bank statements for the appropriate months and save them next to. And before I do (I'm supposed to be working right now), write those down on a list as well as "Sketch out this list more."
Most problems that seem hard to overcome (either because you don't know how, or because you don't want to) were not broken down into simple enough tasks. Some warrant a reward (frienship, drugs).
I'm supposed to "do the dishes" -- but if I just take the dishes to the kitchen, empty the drying rack while my coffee is brewing, or rinse the dishes without washing them, the next task is getting simpler. I carry out one or two steps on each visit to the kitchen, so I rarely take off 10-20 full minutes to "do the whole damn thing at once."
Of course, from their perspective, you're the supervillain.
It's just one thing, you know.
- Psychiatrist Explains Why You Feel Tired All The Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sppw7Zq35w
- Why Don't You Want To Do Anything After Binging 4 Hours of Youtube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBgCRJluWTc
Alternatively you can read the "Procrastination" post on the Wait But Why blog about the same subject. That might be more scientifically accurate.
I think my procrastination comes from some combination of ADHD, low-level depression, and existential dread (i.e., does anything really matter anyway?).
If you think ADHD is part of your issue, you might find some videos by Tracy Marks [0] useful. (And if you're not sure about ADHD, you might consider getting tested for it.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@DrTraceyMarks
Essentially, when doing a task with someone else, we are more likely to focus and perform that task better. There are tools like Double [1] that are built just so you can pair up with others to do these activities and get that motivation to start!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_facilitation
[1] https://doubleapp.xyz/
Motivation ebbs and flows, but if one is not completing at least some tasks, it makes it that much harder to create momentum
I was also pointed to this resource by Neel, you could use to it to re-frame the goal of the task (e.g. instead of "do well on exam" -> "pass exam with as little effort as possible"): https://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-you...
It's not a magic bullet though, so here are some other things that help.
Accountability. A person checking in on doing what you need to do.
Timers, alarms, reminders. I have have an Amazon Echo in every room of my house and set reminders whenever something pops into my head.
Pomodoros: just do a couple of minutes and then stop. It's usually not as bad as you imagine.
Above all, forgive yourself. You are a not a machine. You will have better days and worse days. Keep going in the right direction.
This applies to anything really, be it work or chores at home or anything else I either really find boring or can't quite solve. If there is a problem I can't think of a solution for it must be split up more.
If it's something like doing the laundry or something you can just do a little bit here and there. Just 5 minutes of doing what needs to be done, even if it's a quick few dishes in or out of the dishwasher and a few clothes folded up. I don't need to be motivated to manage 5 minutes of doing something. Just 5 more minutes!
For some things though like going to the gym when I really don't want to, refer to the first sentence. I'm not motivated, but I am stubborn so I'm going anyway. :)
It's hard to actually do it, and it's hard to be bored. Being bored is... well, boring. Your brain will have all sorts of impulses and drives to derive any kind of entertainment from anything.
But if you stick with it, it's one of the best strategies to make yourself do something.
* Try to recognize that you work in cycles and try to structure your life and your work according to those cycles. Try to really, viscerally understand that "not every day is gonna be a perfect day" means that some days will be amazing and some days will be terrible and that's part of living life.
* Try to recognize that arbitrary measures of productivity are a part of capitalism that we get taught to buy into at a very early age, at least in the US.
* Think about taking some online ADHD quizzes and if you score reasonably high, maybe think about bringing it up with your doctor. Doing that was a turning point for me personally, both because it's a very useful lens for framing my life and because, right now at this stage of my life, medication really does help me get through my days without the sudden realization at the end of the day that I just spun in circles for 12 hours.
Finding those records was easy, energized by that easy win I picked another easy task, "I'll get together my bank interest statements" and in a couple of hours I was done.
Maybe this could work for you.
I think a lot of procrastination is breaking down a large, nebulous task into a loop of investigate and then resolve until the task is complete, but our brains naturally tell us to avoid this kind of thing, its riskier to go after the food that you really don't know how to acquire and takes a lot of investigation than the food that you've been able to acquire easily in the past
I also find the actual task of breaking something large down into small pieces gets me thinking about the actual task rather than the abstract "big task" and gets me more motivated. Think of it like brain storming.
Now though, it's hard to do the same thing when I spend all day looking at code, but I know once I get started again the momentum and enjoyment of my hobby turned career will drive me
Not sure if this was really helpful lol... but hopefully