How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do

https://ashleyjanssen.com/how-to-motivate-yourself-to-do-a-thing-you-dont-want-to-do/

by mooreds • 10 months ago

323 227 10 months ago

ashleyjanssen.com

willahmad• 10 months ago

"I will read it after this 15 min short video"

Y_Y2• 10 months ago

Why would you do a thing you didn't ultimately want to do though?

actionfromafar• 10 months ago

So you don't become weak and overweight, for instance.

Y_Y2• 10 months ago

If I hadn't wanted to avoid diet and exercise more than I wanted to not be weak and overweight then we wouldn't be here.

thomastjeffery4• 10 months ago

I find "not weak and overweight" to be the least compelling way to frame it.

There are a lot of positive implications that become obvious when you say you want to be strong and lightweight. While "not weak" is a passive character judgement, "strong" is a constantly available opportunity.

plemer• 10 months ago

I read this as: how you can motivate yourself to do something you're currently not motivated to do but "ultimately" believe is worth doing.

__turbobrew__4• 10 months ago

Necessity. I don’t want to do my taxes every year and I need to force myself to just sit down and do it.

giancarlostoro2• 10 months ago

Or someone else will force you to sit down for questioning ;)

jon-wood• 10 months ago

Regrettably I need money in order to eat food.

task3314• 10 months ago

so you do want to do it right, because you want to eat

atoav• 10 months ago

Many reasons. Maybe not doing that thing will be bad inthe long run. Maybe you want the fruit of doing that thing, but cannot enjoy doing it right now, etc.

A popular example would be sports if you're not very fit. You would obviously have tangible health benefits if you did it, you may look more attractive, you may have more energy both physically and mentally. But since you're a couch potatoe sports is demanding, exhausting and sucks. Would you do more sports it would suck less or you might even find it enjoyable, but you don't and that's where you are.

This puts you in the weird spot of wanting a thing but not wanting to do what would get you there, even if the reasons you don't want to do it would vanish if you did it.

You can only really overcome this mentally, e.g. by priming yourself in certain ways, or by creating situations where you don't have a choice, because others rely on you, etc.

giancarlostoro2• 10 months ago

This isn't that they don't want to do it, they do, but they don't want the effort involved.

what_was_it• 10 months ago

Yes! This is the real question.

I wrote about this (as a tangent, but anyway) recently. https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/

TL;DR "akrasia", procrastination etc. are all forms of ambivalence that are not nearly as "psychological" and individual as usually presented. The nausea is in the world itself.

nachox9992• 10 months ago

how to do something when your mind wanna do it because it's rational but your emotions don't because it's painful

task3314• 10 months ago

At the end of the day I don't think there is such a thing. If you do I think deep down you want to do it, otherwise you wouldn't.

Emore• 10 months ago

When future-you wishes present-you had done the thing. So in a sense there is a you (future-you) that actually does want to do the thing.

amelius• 10 months ago

We can learn from people who go to church every Sunday.

ebiester• 10 months ago

I think that's a bit misinformed. Churchgoers get connection to community and most active churchgoers have positive emotional connections to times associated with church.

Now, those who go out of obligation and have negative experiences may agree with you, but church services are some of what I miss most from leaving the religion.

thomastjeffery4• 10 months ago

As someone who used to be in the latter group, I wouldn't call it motivation. More like habitual compliance.

I have many complaints specific to my experience of dragging myself to church, but the experience itself was incredibly neutral.

mallowdram2• 10 months ago

"How words are post-hoc arbitrary retrofits to actual neural thoughts"

A self-help guide about language wholly distinct from thought.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2• 10 months ago

I have participated in a company-wide meeting not that long ago and as a corporate veteran of sorts, I have never heard such a high amount of new corporate friendly neologisms in such a short amount of time. Corporate bingo would have been over 3 minutes flat. There is a part of me that is amused, because people saying those words clearly did not believe them ( delivery was very flat ), but it does make me question the future of our language.

My initial pet theory was that is going to be more uniform as a result, but now... I am not so certain.

mallowdram2• 10 months ago

I began in animation and shifted to gaming in 2001 where we encountered - against our stated goals of delivery - an audience rejecting both words and narratives (they thanked us yet we weren't at all going for this).

So a small team of us stuck together since and we've been unraveling, decrypting how that initial audience craving might work out as a next language.

In retrospect it now seems obvious, how the path led here, but then in 2001, it was a complete mystery.

ImPrajyoth• 10 months ago

You need Drive to get things done. Motivational can only make you start them.

piker2• 10 months ago

I personally draw inspiration from John Carmack. I've understood his approach to be basically just stare at your problem and ignore everything else until you make a little bit of progress. The answer is there.

terabytest• 10 months ago

Sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. My main issue is to even get myself to sit and stare at the work to be done. It has been really frustrating seeing the lengths I go to, consciously or unconsciously, to procrastinate.

koakuma-chan3• 10 months ago

I used to work a non tech office job, one day it became so unbearable, I was literally falling asleep and was no longer able to bring myself to do the job at all, because of how much mental effort was required for even the smallest things. I stood up and quit.

marginalia_nu• 10 months ago

I think it's mostly about accepting that you are the one in control. The problem of "getting yourself to do something" is poorly formulated, as though some other person was in charge of your actions that you have to convince to do what you want.

This confused conviction is the real problem. There is no other you to convince. The same you that you are bargaining with to do the thing is the same you that's doing the bargaining. You can at any moment just do it.

geeB• 10 months ago

That is by far the best approach… if you can do it. If your mind already works that way, you might not appreciate how much of a superpower you have.

bobcorponoi2• 10 months ago

That's interesting, I'll have to look into that and give it a try. Seems like a good way to build back up your attention span as well.

emil-lp2• 10 months ago

This is the Procrastination version of Feynman's problem solving technique.

Write down the problem. Think really hard. Write down the solution.

IncreasePosts5• 10 months ago

Carmack also has an insane net worth and has the freedom to pick and choose the problems he stares at, and set the time tables for a solution. I wouldn't suggest this method if you're some random mid-level programmer.

dysoco2• 10 months ago

Not to say he's unproductive, because he's a beast, but I don't think he's a good example. Carmack got to work on really cool things which he loved (games) most of which were in his own company so he also had a stake on that.

Afterwards he had money to work on other stuff he was passionate about (rockets, VR, etc.) in his own terms.

It's much harder to draw motivation to meaningless work.

jimbokun• 10 months ago

I think this only works if you have difficult and interesting problems to work on.

clickety_clack3• 10 months ago

Is there a quote or source for this? I want to use it in a talk.

piker2• 10 months ago

Sorry I was looking for a transcript, but if you have 5 hours to listen you'll find it in here: https://lexfridman.com/john-carmack/. It's an awesome interview if you haven't heard it anyway.

layer83• 10 months ago

The issue is if even thinking about staring at the problem is already giving you PTSD. If I’m at a point where staring at the problem is fine, there isn’t much of an issue to begin with.

semiinfinitely• 10 months ago

The only way I can convince myself to do it is by finding a suitably engaging show I can distract myself with on my phone while I huff and puff.
Combine the task with something you enjoy. You know what makes cleaning out the garage a lot better? Some good tunes.

This motivational advice is deeply misguided. These are very clear examples of "dopamine stacking". The idea is that by combining a stimulating activity (eg watching show/music) with a motivation-requiring activity (eg working out/cleaning) you can get an initial boost in motivation to accomplish the hard task. It works (initially) because the stimulating task (show/music) is giving you a dopamine increase which feels like motivation to complete the hard task. The problem is that if you repeat this behavior with any consistency, your dopamine system quickly adjusts the high activity-combo level of dopamine as a new baseline. Soon not even the dopamine you get from the combination is sufficient to motivate you to accomplish the task. At this point people often seek another short lived dopamine-increasing stimulus to combine into the mix.

You can see this pattern in people who exercise only with some combination of pre-workout, caffeine, music, phone scrolling.

The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself.

further reading: 1. https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz

emil-lp2• 10 months ago

further reading: youtube

shermantanktop• 10 months ago

turn on subtitles, i guess?

SoftTalker3• 10 months ago

The "treat yourself to a donut" suggestion got me. Sure, eat a donut, completely negating the caloric burn of the 30 minutes of aerobics you're motivating/rewarding yourself for.

watters• 10 months ago

For plenty of already-in-shape people, the calories expended during the exercise are largely incidental, with the goal of exercise being to enhance or maintain some other property of their physical capacity.

IncreasePosts5• 10 months ago

You'll still have improved cardiovascular fitness even if you aren't losing weight.

Any ways, a lot of studies have shown your body has a variety of methods that attempt to counteract excess calories burned, like reduction in non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

Nifty3929• 10 months ago

I'll disagree slightly, though clearly you are correct that if your goal is to offset calories, then eating a donut negates the benefits of the exercise activity.

My disagreement is that I think exercise should not primarily be about calories - it should be about fitness. And almost all of the fitness gains from exercise persist even if you replace the calories with a donut.

Exercising for 30min and then relacing those spent calories with donuts is FAR better than not exercising and forgoing those extra calories.

stronglikedan• 10 months ago

that not how it works. that's not how any of this works.

the aerobics build up muscle that will always be burning calories by merely existing. a donut here and there won't make a negligible difference, as long as the weekly aerobic activity level is maintained.

idle_zealot• 10 months ago

The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself

So, just start liking the things you don't like? Sure, ideally that's the solution you want, but it's not exactly actionable advice.

fapjacks• 10 months ago

Yeah, the ancient stoics made a whole philosophy about it.

somethingsome• 10 months ago

My 2 cents : I make it a game or I find beauty in it.

As a more concrete example, as soon as you learn to enjoy learning as an activity, it becomes fun, whatever you are studying. So you only need to learn to have fun while learning. Start with simple things, make it a game, find beauty in what you are learning.

macNchz• 10 months ago

People are adaptable. Likes and dislikes and comfort zones are all malleable. I never liked working out in the slightest. Never stuck to any sort of "gym routine" more than a few days. Did most of the Couch to 5k program in college but never kept running. Just...never liked it. I had lots of friends in high school and college who ran Cross Country, and was always a bit baffled about the appeal. It seemed terrible, honestly.

When my friend randomly suggested that we try a very ambitious hiking route, I knew it would absolutely suck if I didn't train for it. I got a gym membership and told myself I'd at the very least set foot in the gym 7 days a week for the first few weeks, just to build the habit of going. I was motivated to make sure I didn't slack off and ruin the hike for the group by being undertrained. A few months of that and the hike went great.

When we got back, though, I found it felt weird to not go to the gym in the mornings before work (as a decidedly NON-morning person my friends and family looked at me like I'd grown a second head when they heard me say I was working out before work). I started running outside on days the gym was crowded, and it felt good! In the nearly eight years since then, there have been only a handful of weeks where I didn't go for a run—I genuinely really enjoy it, no motivational tricks required.

nradov6• 10 months ago

If you want actionable advice, forget about motivation and stick to discipline instead.

omnicognate• 10 months ago

Do you want to do it or not? If you actually want to do it you should be able to obtain some satisfaction from getting it done, however distasteful the task itself. Sometimes it's as simple as that: either realising you really do want to do it or realising you really don't and reconsidering why you're trying to make yourself do it in the first place.

But sometimes the problem isn't motivation. Sometimes it's energy. Sometimes you really do want to do it, to the core of your being, but you're just too fucking tired. That's a very different problem.

johnfn• 10 months ago

Really, deeply misguided? It's "deeply misguided" to listen to music while coding? I find that hard to believe.

IncreasePosts5• 10 months ago

You probably like music and coding, and friends and food, and singing and hiking. OP was talking about blending activities you like with activities you don't like, as a way of getting you to do the thing you don't like.

nerdponx• 10 months ago

I don't think listening to or watching something entertaining while doing something unpleasant or boring or uncomfortable is an example of dopamine stacking. It's just a distraction technique that helps you take your mind off the aspects of it that you don't want to think about or be aware of.

Listening to music or a podcast while you work or exercise is a completely normal, non-dopamine stacking, thing to do. In the past, before radio and recorded music, people daydreamed or sang to accomplish the same goal.

pessimizer• 10 months ago

Daydreaming and singing to yourself is not entertaining. It's just something that an unstimulated brain does. To get to that destimulated place is the object imo - where what you're doing is so habitual that every step seems like a breath, and you only notice the ones you miss.

I remember before I learned the basics of cooking how hard everything was, and how much I had to concentrate. These days I'll spend 20 minutes cooking something, plate it and go to the bathroom, and have forgotten what I cooked before seeing it again. I remember when I was learning Spanish, and every successful paragraph I read merited a celebration, and now I sometimes can't remember whether something I read was in Spanish or English an hour after I've read it.

My biggest improvement in writing came after I stopped listening to music while doing it. Get it over with, then listen to music. Once you get into the habit, it's like taking a nap not having a party. I remember a factory I worked at in my 20s where I got up to doing 76 hour weeks with no days off because I was so good at what I was doing, I entered a timeless place. There was no time to get bored in. I'm sure I might have hummed, but I wouldn't remember. I certainly wasn't thinking about anything important; those machines could have ripped my hands off.

brailsafe• 10 months ago

In the past, before radio and recorded music, people daydreamed or sang to accomplish the same goal.

Call it pain avoidance or dopamine stacking, they're probably both apt, but there's a difference in degree between the level of control and personalization and dependence between humming a tune or listening to a stationary giant radio and the current state of not being able to do anything remotely unstimulating or arduous like standing on a train or going to sleep without a distraction; how normal it is seems like logical fallacy, It's also pretty normal for people to spend 5 hours a day looking at their phones, not have made any friends in adulthood outside school, or have any romantic prospects.

I find it funny/depressing that I've been asked at least 3 times why I don't wear headphones at the gym. If you can pull a lever or click a button and take your mind of something you've never let become less painful, how important is the distinction?

tgv• 10 months ago

So, where does the evidence come from? I don't buy the explanation, and I can't find any article published by Huberman on dopamine.

bubblyworld2• 10 months ago

I think people use "dopamine" in quite a loose sense to refer to reward centres in the brain and habit formation, not literally the hormone (though it's related). You might have better luck digging around those topics.

Capricorn24812• 10 months ago

Firstly, Huberman has turned into a hack, and this video is a great example of his drift into "just trust me bro" pop science. Secondly,

You can see this pattern in people who exercise only with some combination of pre-workout, caffeine, music, phone scrolling

Where do you see this pattern? I would wager nowhere, even if it sounds like it "could" happen. I've worked out with a lot of people. I listen to music while working out, as do many people. I would enjoy working out less without it. But I'm not in some Dopamine spiral where I need to stack more stuff on top just to keep working out. I've been doing it for years.

I've noticed a lot of health influencers like Huberman, who need to make content frequently, have been honing in on gut-feeling conclusions derived from novice science facts you can expect anyone to know about. He casts a wide net with a Psychology Today level concept, and he builds an audience of people that can't separate the lazy conclusions he makes from the objectively true but elementary facts he bases them on.

Look at the comments, where people are accusing each other of being dopamine hijacked because they eat and read at the same time. Give me a break. Your reward system is not a fragile thing that is easily broken. The actual causes of dopamine hijacking are things like spending all day playing video games, not having a coffee before working out.

IncreasePosts5• 10 months ago

who need to make content frequently

I think this is a major issue with so much of the "creator community". When you make this thing your job, you can't just not show up to work for a few months at a time. But, if your content is "information regurgitation", like reading health studies and reporting them to your audience, is there really enough out there to make it a full time job? Doubtful. So, you'll end up either rehashing yourself over and over (your viewers will get bored and leave), or start going to the fringes of your field where there is far less basis for your statements than what originally brought your audience in.

bubblyworld2• 10 months ago

Your reward system is a fragile thing that is easily broken. Just look around you next time you go anywhere. We live in a society of smart phone addicts. That said, the examples OP gave of tunes while exercising seem pretty benign compared to superstimuli like social media or drugs...

RankingMember• 10 months ago

It's a cruel cycle with YouTubers- they run out of stuff to say/stuff they can authoritatively talk about, but are basically forced to continue coming up with more content in order to stay relevant and keep their income going.

Melatonic3• 10 months ago

Seriously - always thought the guy was one step up from a grifter. His education has little to do with what he talks about and of course like many he has something also to sell

layer83• 10 months ago

Huberman was a hack from the start of his podcast. It was a bit baffling what people were seeing in him.

saghm• 10 months ago

I'd also worry that the association of a fun activity with one you don't like can reduce the amount of fun from the first activity even when you stop doing them together. This is obviously not a scientific experiment, but I always struggled to wake up in the morning even with alarms (which I've since improved at with better understanding of some specific sleep conditions I have), and in an attempt to try to make it less annoying, I tried a couple times over the years to pick a song I liked as an alarm phone rather than a typical alarm sound. It never helped make waking up any easier, but it completely ruined both of the songs I tried for me in the short term, and even now years later I don't really enjoy them nearly as much as I used to. Hearing the opening notes of either of them just reminds me of the annoyance I felt waking up years ago.

multjoy• 10 months ago

I’ve got colleagues who have to grade CASM (scrolling through images and classifying them as category A, B, C etc.

This can take literally days and the first thing they are told is don’t listen to music they enjoy while doing it, because they will never again be able to listen to that music.

layman51• 10 months ago

I generally agree. Some of the things I don't want to do are actually pretty complex and require my full attention so I wouldn't be able to listen to a podcast or music with lyrics. Maybe I'm in a weird situation that requires some kind of shift. On the other hand, I am sure I can do 30 minutes on an "assaultbike" without having to distract myself with a TV show.

layer83• 10 months ago

I’m kind-of the opposite: I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a TV show while exercising.

Llamamoe• 10 months ago

Person with severe ADHD here. At least for me, it also helps because many hard activities are not stimulating enough for the effort they require, and persisting through understimulation is HARD.

ge963• 10 months ago

Ha my pre-workout is ibuprofen and redbull

lucas_membrane• 10 months ago

I think I've found ways to dodge the problems you describe. I am a person who is has been addiction-adjacent in my search for novelty for an absurdly long time. I've been quite devoted, however, to physical exercise very much like that described in the article for around 20 years, with favorable results. Throughout this time, I have listened to audio recordings while exercising, and it has always been my favorite aspect of the routine. But I have switched between music, audiobooks, and podcasts a few times during the 20 years, and the novelty of the various genres and topics available is enough to keep me going. For the last few years I've been doing the podcasts, and these seem to keep my interest. I've got a 32 GB mp3 player, which allows me to select from 15 or so roughly hour-long episodes of 15 or so podcasts, some of which take in a wide range of topics and most of the rest are put together by people who embody novelty in their deepest vesicles. I spend an hour or three every month or three searching out new episodes of the podcasts that continue operating and archives of old podcasts that arouse my interests. And I like doing that, too.

cjbarber• 10 months ago

My observation is it's an equation between:

1) reward/incentive/expected good feelings

2) effort/displeasure of doing the thing and the result

One way to increase #1 is to make it more socially involved. If you're working on a project solitarily, start going to events and talking about it with people, or write about it online. Humans are massively socially motivated.

For #2, one way to address this is with emotional processing. Often something is unpleasant because it reminds of something we didn't like from the past. So really digesting those emotions can allow the expected displeasure to fade because we kind of integrate it into our brains/bodies. But the key for this is that it has to be emotional processing, not intellectual processing.

Forgeties79• 10 months ago

Don’t forget 3) consequences for not doing it

idiotsecant2• 10 months ago

Yes, in my experience the social part of this is not so much the carrot, but the stick. If I don't do this thing, I will look lazy to this person or this person will be disappointed or inconvenienced, etc.

Probably not a healthy outlook!

thomastjeffery4• 10 months ago

I have spent my entire life frustrated with the reality that none of this advice actually works for me. This is because motivation was never my problem to begin with: my problem is "executive dysfunction", which is very counterproductively titled ADHD.

xyzzy95632• 10 months ago

Well think of this: if you knew there was $100 million in a dufflebag of gold at the bottom of a pond, would you learn how to put on scuba gear and retrieve it?

Perhaps you don't have compelling enough reasons to do things.

bobcorponoi2• 10 months ago

I have a similar issue, I can find motivation to start something but then it spirals into other things.

For $100 million I would probably just learn to put on the scuba gear but for instance my mind would go to "I should make my own scuba gear". So for a personal project I start on something and decide I need something else, so then I want to make a tool to help me make that thing and so on. I think it's probably related to a shorter attention span so I'm working on that.

thomastjeffery4• 10 months ago

Learn how? Almost definitely.

Actually do it? That's a lot less certain than you would expect.

I would probably start. Since this hypothetical is a pretty simple one-off, I might even manage to generate enough executive functioning to follow through.

What I can tell you for certain is that I am still very excited to work on a custom keyboard project that I started 4 years ago. I have all the parts and equipment readily available at home, and plenty of free time. I have not worked on it at all over the past 4 years.

doubled112• 10 months ago

I do need a compelling reason to do something. I can't figure out how all these people get through what they do without wanting to jump out their office windows, to be honest.

Is it fun/interesting? Can I make it fun/interesting? Does it make me or save me money so I can do something fun/interesting?

If the answer is no to all of these questions, I'm going to have a bad time. Unfortunately, I'm that simple. I've gotten better at number two over the years, though.

Scuba diving sounds fun. I'd probably do it for less.

tpoacher• 10 months ago

This is completely misguided for two reasons.

1) you're talking about ADHD which is a disability. It's like asking someone with no legs if they could sprout legs if the reason was compelling enough. The answer is still no.

2) If you were to counter the above by saying that, if you were compelled enough you might devote a small fortune and a few years training yourself and researching how to develop and use bionic legs, we then run into problem no 2: exceptional incentives / circumstances are not scalable, and the logic cannot be applied to problems of daily routine.

Back when I was a med student, I was expected to attend a clinic which started at 9. Unfortunately the local bus always arrived at that stop at 9:05, and the line was known for its flakiness. The route was 1h and 5min long, and I was about an hour's walk away from the stop myself. So in order to be at the hospital at 8:05 instead of 9:05, I aimed for the 7am bus, meaning I woke up at 5:30 to get to it. Except the 7am bus never showed up. So I waited another hour and got the 8am one, which inevitably arrived at 9:05.

When I got to the clinic 5 minutes late and got told off, I explained what happened, and the consultant said exactly the same thing you said: if there was a pot of money waiting you'd have been on time.

Yes except there wasn't, and I have to be at clinic every day, there was no way of knowing the first bus would not show up, and I can't afford to wake up at 4:30 everyday to get two buses ahead of the 8am one, just because some idiot thinks an imaginary pot of guilt-trip money would have instantly solved the problem.

nashashmi• 10 months ago

As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate.

As a person with ADHD, this struck me. I have an easy time continuing something. But an impossible time starting and finishing something. Obviously I am not mentally healthy. But who is this person who is mentally healthy? And what am I missing to being the same way?

I think it boils down to being yelled at and penalized and being unable to handle this feedback well enough. I don’t know exactly what I am fearing here. It will be an exploration.

you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with.

I am never pleased at the end of a project. I am blame full why I could not do it before.

WalterSear• 10 months ago

What you are missing is that estimates of ADHD heritability vary between 60 and 90%.

There's a lots of one can do to overcome and accommodate it, but one of the first steps is to approach neurotypical productivity advice with substantial skepticism: they aren't fighting the fight we are; don't even know that our fight exists.

xyzzy95632• 10 months ago

The way that works best for me is a 2-step approach:

1. Think about the ultimate goal and why you want to do it. If there isn't a compelling reason, there is no reason to do it, especially if there is short-term pain or annoyance.

2. Take at least one small action towards it per day. This often puts you in the mindset to do more things.

csr86• 10 months ago

If I remember correctly, a YT video from Andrew Hubermann, talks about rewards and that you should avoid excessive rewards.

It can make the actual work even more painful, because your mind is too focused on the reward, instead of trying to enjoy the hard work itself.

hbarka• 10 months ago

I understand that these heuristics are completely different for people with ADHD.

Also the role of dopamine cycles has a big effect on proactiveness.

Arch-TK• 10 months ago

I can do the things that are hard to start but fine to continue. But sometimes you have a very long slog which is hard to start and hard to continue and hard to finish. That's where the difficulty lies.

incomingpain• 10 months ago

I just spent a couple weeks hyperfocused on solo building a whole new python project from scratch. Motivation is a skill that needs to be trained.

It's a bit counter intuitive, and while your environment needs to be conducive to work. Among the other factors, you dont just gain motivation by having a clean desk.

duderific4• 10 months ago

On the other hand, I'd posit that you're much less likely to feel motivated if your desk is messy.

nachox9992• 10 months ago

"just DO IT!!!"

-Shia LaBeouf

SoftTalker3• 10 months ago

That's what it really boils down to.

RyanOD• 10 months ago

Oddly, I sort of agree. Many times I've put something off for days, but then once I finally get myself over the hump and get working on it, I actually get focused and sort of enjoy the challenge. It's weird, but it's the not the task that is the problem...it's just getting started.

duderific4• 10 months ago

I call this the "Wall of Inertia." Before you walk up to it and face it, it feels 10 feet tall, but once you actually just take it on, it only turned out to be 6 inches tall and you can easily hop over it.

But it feeling 10 feet tall is enough to make you avoid it entirely for a long time.

everyone• 10 months ago

Do what u wanna do.

Don't do what u don't wanna do.

Or at least try, doing otherwise is crazy right?

jraph2• 10 months ago

If only.

siliconc0w• 10 months ago

For more intellectual endeavors I find if I'm avoiding working on something it can be because I'm being lazy or just don't like the category of work but often it is a good sign it's not quite the right activity for the moment. It may not be well defined enough, or the highest priority, or doubting it is likely to yield the outcome I want. Time of day matters too, in the morning I feel like doing different things than in the afternoon. I can push through and "just do it" if I have to but often it's worth listening to this feeling and picking a task I am motivated to do instead.

jraph2• 10 months ago

Do something quick and crappy. And let your perfectionism fix it. And... here you are gotten started!

It can be a single word or a instruction that crashes your program at the location that needs to be worked on.

Leave a syntax error for getting started quick tomorrow.

Write down what needs to be done before it leaves your head (but don't make it perfectly structured and clean, a few words on a paper on your desk will do).

edit: For instance, you'd possibly want to fix the missing "n" in this comment. Make this feeling a tool against your procrastination.

edit2: ah, and get the hell out of HN, too.

trjordan• 10 months ago

Everybody is different, but the biggest reason I struggle with this right now is the pace of modern life.

Doing hard things is hard, and that means I won't be thinking about the other stuff I have to do. I'm more apt to miss a text from my family when I'm running or writing a document than when I'm vibe coding, because the effort is all-encompassing. Subconsciously, that's stressful, so I steer away from it.

Habits help here, because with enough repetition, I learn that it's OK to disappear for an hour to do the thing. But the real issue is getting the meta-organization of my life right enough that I'm not scared to shut down my ambient executive function for that hour. This shows up as both "I'm too busy to do the hard thing" and "I'm too tired to do the hard thing."

Slowing down isn't the answer, but it's been pretty transformative to notice that that's what I'm worried about.

nicbou• 10 months ago

I agree. There's always so much to do just to stay on top of things. Everything from writing to people down to watering plants and updating software.

Last summer I went to a festival, and for a week I was unreachable, had no working phone, and had no chores. I could eat by showing my bracelet. I didn't even have the time. It was blissful.

coffeecoders• 10 months ago

I find it interesting how a lot of this advice overlaps with the same tricks we use in software engineering to tackle big problems. Breaking things into smaller chunks or even gamifying with streaks is basically the human version of agile sprints.

Sleep, diet, and stress are like "system dependencies".

gmac• 10 months ago

task3314• 10 months ago

After several years of trying to come up with the perfect way to keep motivation up, I have found there is no such thing.

The only thing that matters for me nowadays is this: before I start the task, I admit to myself that it is going to be hard, but I am doing it anyways, so why do it like its a drag? It's pointless and it's a waste of energy.

task3314• 10 months ago

Also, I have found that if I don't open myself up to the hard task at hand before I start, a lot of things can happen that deviates myself from doing the task in its optimal form. For example, I can come up with excuses for not doing the task right now, or I can invent other work that is 'more important', or find something to blame while I do the task so I can cope with its difficulty, etc.

There is a myriad of things that can be invented to avoid or cope with the pain, but if I am going through this anyway, there is no reason whatsoever to make it more painful that it will already be.

guhcampos• 10 months ago

Let's all be honest here.

I use Vyvanse.

nextworddev• 10 months ago

Biggest productivity hack is to just avoid working in fields you don’t feel passionate about. If you don’t know what you are passionate about, then just keep trying things passionately

GoldenMonkey• 10 months ago

Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand. Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks.

Lifting weights... imagine the stronger person you will become. Studying for that exam.. picture the career you aspire to. Avoiding that donut... imagine the healthier you.

Habit stacking helps to remind one of the task to do. To avoid the struggle of doing them, picture the desired outcome.

aeve890• 10 months ago

Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand
Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks.

IME if you have ADHD those two things are basically the same. Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way.

zahlman• 10 months ago

Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way.

This seems extremely relatable.

Except instead of "I'm healthier, stronger, happier etc." it's more like "I've accomplished all the things I've thought of accomplishing" (each of which seems well within my grasp, if I could choose).

reddit_clone2• 10 months ago

Mal-adaptive day dreaming!

When I read 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' well into my adulthood, I cried.

dysoco2• 10 months ago

I've actually read quite the opposite a few times.

If you focus on the end-goal you can easily get frustrated once you don't see any results, specially on such long-term goals such as graduating, improving your career or becoming buff by doing exercise.

Supposedly it's actually better to just try and find meaning and joy in the process itself, enjoy lifting/studying regardless of the end results.

Obviously none of this is an exact science so each person might think different.

siva73• 10 months ago

There are millions of articles on the internet about this topic. You can equally feed Chatgpt the submission title and it will give you roughly similiar advice. Forget all this crap: See rather a proper physician and psychologist if you struggle with this problems for a long time to be checked for various conditions.

bena• 10 months ago

I guess I motivate myself by realizing that taking care of the problem early will be easier than later.

By knowing if I don’t get this thing done, it doesn’t get done.

That for some tasks “want” doesn’t matter.

rglover• 10 months ago

Don't. Motivation external to the self will always be ephemeral and fleeting, like a drug (hence the popularity of "motivational" content on YouTube). If you don't have a genuine desire to do the thing, don't do it. Not because you can't do it, but because you lack the internal drive and inspiration to do it (and that may just be right now, not permanently).

GeorgeTirebiter2• 10 months ago

Yes, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Sometimes, you MUST do a task (taxes, take a driving test, etc).

And, yes, the extent that tasks start from intrinsic motivation, you're ahead of the game. For me, this is making habits (personal example: eating less). Habit frees you (mostly) of the need for any sort of 'motivation' - it's just Habit.

tedggh2• 10 months ago

Everyone is different, but here’s my hack that took me from an overweight, mostly sedentary person to a relatively fit 40 miles per week runner and 7 days/week weight lifter.

1) Remove friction. I am also an enthusiast cyclist, but gearing up and getting my bike ready takes time which gives me plenty of opportunities to reconsider that 50 mile ride in 90F heat. In contrast, getting ready for a run takes me 5 minutes so there’s no much time to find excuses.

2) Get it out of the way first time in the morning before breakfast. There’s this extremely positive feeling when you achieve a goal early. I think it makes the rest of your day feel much easier particularly at work.

3) The Pareto principle. 80% easy effort and 20% intense/hard. I am not completely sold on the science but definitely works for me. I don’t get injured often and I recover faster, which allows me to exercise more often. I guess 70-30 would also work but the idea is the same, just go easy most of the time, you’ll get the same benefits without being sore or in pain.

4) Once in a while (twice a year for me) sign up for an event, a 10K, a half iron man, a bike ride, whatever, and tell everyone about it. Some relatives and friends will held you accountable for it.

5) Find a fitness buddy. Ideally it would be someone you spend lots of time with, your spouse, sister or roommate. In my case is my fiance. This also allows for accountability and moral support because you drag each other on those days you are not feeling like exercising.

6) Track your metrics besides weight. Weight is not the best feedback for motivation. There better feedback metrics like Vo2max and HRV. Get a good tracking device that’s reasonably accurate and easy to use and provides you good history. I use Apple Watch but other ones like Coros are good too.

7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard!

8) Gear. Don’t buy shitty gear to try out an activity and see if you like it. You won’t like it because you are using shitty gear. Invest in gear that is safe, comfortable and of decent quality. It will make the experience much better and you’ll have more chances of sticking with it.

__turbobrew__4• 10 months ago

7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard!

It is a lot easier to control when you wake up over when you go to sleep. Set an alarm, always get up when the alarm goes off and eventually you will be tired earlier at night and fall asleep.

xyzzy_plugh• 10 months ago

This is the funniest thing I've read all day. I'm sure I'm not alone in that this reads just like the "don't be not good looking" kind of advice.

If only life were so simple.

balfirevic4• 10 months ago

Go to bed early

Why? You have 24 hours in a day no matter when you sleep. How did it help?

IncreasePosts5• 10 months ago

I used to sleep like 2AM-10AM, and something I realized towards the end of that phase of my life was that it was easier to be productive at 9AM than it was at 12AM. And coming downstairs and encountering people who have been awake for 3 hours and are in the "middle" of their day, having done productive things already, was fairly demotivating.

nradov6• 10 months ago

Great advice. Along those same lines, it can also helpful to sign up for periodic sessions with a coach or personal trainer, and join a club that has regular weekly group workouts. These steps aren't essential but help to sort of shift the default and make it harder to procrastinate.

brunocalza• 10 months ago

The idea that you need to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do is an idea that needs deeper investigation. I've caught myself trying to do that a bunch of times. Why the hell I think I need to do this thing in the first place?

I totally get things like I have a job and there's a task that needs to get done. But what about outside the job life?

tedggh2• 10 months ago

Fitness is hard because there’s very little to zero immediate benefit particularly if you are out of shape. I also think for many things, particularly those related to lifestyles and behaviors, the goal is to do it often enough so that it becomes a habit. Most people probably don’t enjoy brushing their teeth, but we also don’t think much about it, we just do it. I feel the same way with running, I don’t think I enjoy it, certainly not all the time like in winter, but it became a morning routine that is easy to execute.

clickety_clack3• 10 months ago

Speaking from no expertise but my own decades of living, the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them. No excuses, no procrastination, no unrelated rewards, just do it. Everything else is a hack based on procrastination, or making you feel good about procrastination. You have to make a contract with yourself, where there is no payoff but that the thing gets done, and then do not break that contract. If you can’t make yourself do big things, make yourself do small things, but do them without fail.

If you do that, you will become a different person.

balfirevic4• 10 months ago

the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them

Do you have anything that's not tautological?

clickety_clack3• 10 months ago

Ha, I mean that’s not the only line I wrote, but a lot of people give themselves the option of not actually doing the thing, or doing something else in hopes that they’ll somehow develop motivation. Anyway there’s lots of other advice here you can take if you’re looking for it.

GeorgeTirebiter2• 10 months ago

Same 'speaking from living' and I want to amplify a spark you mention: break down the task into smaller pieces; the size of the piece is how much time you can force yourself to do the task, fully knowing after 5 minutes (10 minutes, whatever) you'd have done that mini-piece. This builds success, power, confidence. Then you can tackle the NEXT piece, etc. Virtuous cycle. ("See, it wasn't THAT bad...maybe even a little fun!")

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

daft_pink• 10 months ago

I find this is what happens to me. I just back burner things that I don’t want to do and do the easy stuff and after a while I just have a list of all these back burner undoable projects and it’s like the worst thing ever because then I’m not motivated to do anything, because I have to complete all these terrible back burner projects.

pgspaintbrush• 10 months ago

One fun trick for this is to commit to writing a check to a non profit you dislike / would be embarrassed by if you don't complete your task.

HankStallone• 10 months ago

Interesting, but I think if I can talk myself out of completing the task, I'll be able to talk myself out of writing the punishment check.

pipeline_peak• 10 months ago

Speaking of motivation, maybe provide a hook instead of expecting your reader to dive head first into your otherwise lukewarm air bike analogy? Why do so many bloggers seem to think we have an infinite length attention span to their personal stories?

“This morning I made an omelette, but I forgot eggs so I had to go to the grocery store. On my way to the store my mom called and reminded me of my cousins birthday coming up…”

“Now that you’ve read all this, you should be able to sum up the importance of planning ahead!”

duderific4• 10 months ago

I think it's a pretty common writing technique to start out with a personal anecdote, so the reader feels like they can relate to the person writing the story. Maybe this particular one didn't draw you in.

AnotherGoodName• 10 months ago

I do amazingly well in life if i simply remove the 'more desirable things'. As in i uninstall all games and set some manual routes of popular sites to 127.0.0.1 for a while.

simpaticoder• 10 months ago

Boredom is the key to solving this problem. Exert control over yourself, do not let yourself do anything other than the task. No watching videos, no reading of either web sites or books, no checking the phone, no listening to music. Nothing. Eventually the original task will be a pleasant relief. Basically you're increasing your interest in the activity relative to other tasks rather than trying to increase intrinsic interest in the task.

Lionga• 10 months ago

About as helpful as telling a drug addict to just stop using drugs, ez pz

aidenn02• 10 months ago

This doesn't work for me. As a child, my parents put me in a room with nothing but my math homework. I would preferably (and did) stare at the wall for 3 hours to doing my math homework.

laurent_du• 10 months ago

I recently found a weird trick to motivate myself to do things I don't want to do. Instead of thinking of the outcome of this task (which I probably don't care much about since I don't want to do it in the first place), I think about the fact that doing things I don't want to do makes me better at doing things I don't want to do, which is a desirable outcome for me. Your mileage may vary.

haunter• 10 months ago

I need this for language learning

sharpshadow• 10 months ago

Doing it to distract yourself from the other thing which you want to do even less.

reddit_clone2• 10 months ago

This works for me, sometimes.

More often than not, the primary task I am not doing becomes a 'keylog' issue, I can't do anything else either.

Its just a death spiral.

aquafox• 10 months ago

Terence Tao uses a trick, I think he calls "structured procrastination": When there is a thing he doesn't want to do, he recalls another thing he doesn't want to do more. This way he's procrastinating on the other thing by doing the not favoured one.

1dom• 10 months ago

I think that sounds like productive procrastion, it won an Ig-Nobel award. As you say, it's basically finding something you don't want to do even more than the thing you need to do, so you instead procrastinate productively by doing the needful.

photon_garden• 10 months ago

Also worth considering: just don't do the thing and live with the consequences. You have to apply this with care, but it's worth having in the toolbox.

wilkommen• 10 months ago

Or maybe, if you don't want to do the thing, that's your true values showing. If it's your true values showing, then you should consider listening, and maybe just don't do the thing at all!

duderific4• 10 months ago

That doesn't really work for important things like going to the dentist, keeping healthy etc. The downside of just not doing those things is enormous.

gabrielsroka• 10 months ago

Mark Manson recently did a 4-Hour podcast on procrastination https://youtu.be/b77XuGU52To

danielmarkbruce• 10 months ago

Only doing it once a week is the problem. Good luck making a habit out of that.

lisbbb2• 10 months ago

I bought one of those Concept 2 rowers based on all the hype online. I absolutely, positively HATED rowing. I did it a lot, but I hated it. The rower got sold this summer, it's out of my life. I much prefer my treadmill and I'll probably get a bike at some point. I hated everything about rowing, though.

entslscheia• 10 months ago

why?

kubav027• 10 months ago

This is reason I am not doing workouts at home. I hate splitting workout and normal life to separate categories. So I try to integrate physical exercise into daily schedule. I commute by running, cycling or walking paired with public transport. Also I do a lot of walking/running with my small kids. I am able to average 10 km walk per day with two 30 km bicycle rides in hilly terrain and one 5 km run per week. This is without forcing myself to "workout time". If I have time I am also going to bouldering or wall climbing once a week. It works great because I have reasonable physical exercise despite enjoying time with my kids and being an office worker.

Imanari• 10 months ago

My strategy: actively give yourself permission to just not do the thing, it’s ok! Enjoy your “time off“. This alone sometimes just makes me do the thing eventually kind of out of nowhere.

aucisson_masque• 10 months ago

À while ago, i went very hard on sport and even though i know before training that it would be hard, i would always reach some point during the training (usually around 40 minutes) where a feel good sensation, kind of god like, happen.

And you know, doing something hard when you know you’re going to get the high isn’t so terrible. But at some point it went away and since then I could not ever reach that.

I thought it was endorphine or dopamine kicking in, but why it would suddenly stop is weird.

That was years ago, still doing lot of sports and tried a few other since then, some I liked more, some I liked less, no difference whatsoever.

I’m thinking maybe I’m not pushing myself hard anymore but last summer I climbed Mont ventoux on bicycle 3 times during the same day. As a year old cyclist it was absolutely exhausting yet nothing at all. Just glad the suffering ended.

Also checked my hormones, everything fine.

That’s weird but I’m just wondering if that happened to someone else.

Madmallard• 10 months ago

"The pattern often goes like this:

    Before you start, it feels daunting, and the prospect lingers in the back of your mind. You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger.
    When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress.
    As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate.
    When it’s over, you feel relieved, like a weight has been taken off your shoulders, and you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with."

This is never really my experience.

If it's something I really don't like doing, even when I'm doing it I hate it every step of the way and it just gets worse and worse overtime.

Otherwise I would want to do it to at least some extent. In which case, yeah I would eventually be able to muster motivation and push through.

jll29• 10 months ago

I'll keep it short, to avoid spending too much time on HN when other stuff should be prioritized, so apologies for repeating things that others have already said. ;-)

What I do is three things from the OP, and one extra thing:

- break down things into chunks (divide and conquer is what computer scientists are trained to apply)

- reward yourself (after each mini-step, I grab some chocolate, after certain time units, I will make a short break, and after the complete session if I'm satisfied with what I have achieved, I might order myself a book from my online wish list ;-).

- The third and most important part is start by picking a small and easy task. In many cases, the problem is easier to solve and less painful to complete than it appeared before starting to tackle it; once you're on it, things get easier and you may soon enter the flow and then things start to fly & rapid progress may ensue. I circle around the hard parts fixing a bunch of easy things that I know are easily and immediately solvable. Going around Mount Everest and depleting bits from all sides, suddenly it's not that big and scary anymore, and I have already understand bits from different parts, so my mental model of the problem as a whole approaches what's left of the real Mount Everest, not a huge mountain behind a wall of fog.

Curiously, I'm successful with that technique, and I have a friend whom I also consider successful who does it the other way round: he starts with the carved-out core problem, and once he knows how to solve that, the rest is just code writing approaching boilerplate-level. And before that, he does not bother with addressing all the other stuff, the "mere periphery".

I call my method outside-in and his method inside-out. In theory, I appreciate his method, but in practice, my method makes me more productive, because even on a very bad day (say, a zero flow, mega-unproductive day, which happens, but thankfully not that often), I can write a logger or a test harness, and once I've done any of these easy bits, the dopapine reward will motivate me to solve harder parts & because I've started to write code or whatever it is I need to do that I was postponing/dragging out, I'll be more likely in the zone and will be able to do the harder bits of it.

BTW, don't confuse the *order* of doing things with the kind of *abstraction* in software architecture (where I would consider myself a top-down thinking person that consciously combines top-down and bottum up approaches to ensure the pieces fits together and each piece can be build). The two are related, but not the same thing.

ge963• 10 months ago

My day job writing code I play a techno/rave playlist to get in the mood. Has to be something I already know. Kangluenster in this case.

ge963• 10 months ago

*Klangkuenstler

The 2 I listen to are: HOR Berlin and secret rave on YT

globalnode• 10 months ago

just do it is the only way forward. perhaps helped by breaking things up into smaller chunks (pomodoro's perhaps). action precedes and creates motivation.

chasing0entropy• 10 months ago

Remember the Tetrapharmacos - three part cure to life. 1. Things that make you happy are easy to otain. 2. Things that are painful are relatively brief. The greater the pain, the shorter the duration. 3. Don't fear god. This doesn't mean don't fear consequences - it means don't live life afraid of what will come.

aidenn02• 10 months ago

Step #1 is a significant amount of mental effort; how do I motivate myself to do that?

plantwallshoe• 10 months ago

My trick lately has been to allow myself to do nothing.

If I don’t want to do the task, that’s fine. I’m allowed to sit at my desk and do exactly nothing for as long as I want. No hackernews, no snack breaks, no bill paying, no online shopping, etc. I just sit there and do nothing.

Eventually the thing I need to do becomes the most interesting thing in my orbit and I do it. Sometimes I sit there for 15 minutes doing nothing before the task I don’t want to do becomes interesting enough.

showsover• 10 months ago

That sounds like a great way to limit the procrastination for many things while at the same time include a bit of mindfulness (i.e. sitting still with your thoughts).

esperent• 10 months ago

This sounds very much like the first steps towards a mindfulness practice. Which will probably be good for many aspects of your life, but not necessarily procrastination, as doing (and thinking) nothing becomes a goal in itself.

amzin• 10 months ago

Professional procrastinator here. All the tips in the post are common knowledge and, sadly, not very good (especially in the long run).

The only thing that works for many people is to skip the motivation part and embrace the rather uncomfortable principle of "action before motivation."

The flow state will come. I believe it arises independently of motivation. Motivation just tricks us into believing that everything we do should bring joy.

It will — but not right now; we need to dive in first.

cowboylowrez• 10 months ago

yeah its sort of the no pain no gain approach but I like it. my best hack is time logging. I feel that if I specifically label breaks or procrastination or production failures, I at least feel like I'm more in control. I like the act of blogging about it though, it never fails to pick me up knowing I'm not alone with suffering from procrastination and I am always happy to read thoughts about it.

mcv• 10 months ago

I actively did some crossfit a couple of years ago. It's not my thing at all (when I exercise at all, I tend towards obscure martial arts), and I absolutely hated it, but at some point I went 3 times a week, and I still don't entirely grasp how I managed that.

One thing that certainly helped is that after a couple of months, I really started to feel the impact. My back muscles in particular felt like steel cables at some point, and my posture significantly improved.

Then Covid hit and now I'm a weakling again. I'm trying to get some regularity in going to the gym at least twice a week. Monday was my first time in months. But the biggest step is making it part of your routine. Make it something you do without even having to think about it. Once you allow yourself to question it, the discipline breaks.

CommenterPerson• 10 months ago

This is about the only thing that works for me.

"3. Break it into smaller chunks"

Most of the rest seem like tricks to con myself, and I am really bad at that!

scotty792• 10 months ago

You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger. When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress.

For me it still feels terrible long after I start. It takes much longer than few minutes before I stop feeling like somebody was tearing away my skin.

scotty792• 10 months ago

Try to scare yourself about not doing it. Try to frame not doing it as clear and present danger.

How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do

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