For things that I don't have the motivation to do (things I procrastinate), my strategy is to start doing the smallest possible unit of that thing as I can.
Recently I started meditating, something I've tried to get into, but never have. I downloaded this app Balance which encourages daily practice (reminders, 3,5,10 guided meditations, etc). I am still not "motivated" to do it, but I don't need to be because it is just part of my schedule.
The reason I say this is that I feel like "building motivation" is kind of the wrong attitude. You won't like everything that you do (go to the gym, pay your bills, etc), but building a repeatable habit makes it so you don't need to feel motivated. This might be a nitpick, but the big change in thinking for me was around not having to be motivated to do something.
I agree - in my experience, "motivation" is a wildly volatile concept, especially in how a) when it arrives to your thought process, it's usually in the form of bemoaning a lack of motivation, and semi-consequently b) one almost always thinks about "motivation" in a form that is highly moralized (i.e. inviting shame & co.). I find that usually when we employ "motivation" as a concept, it is usually (whether explicitly or latently) in the context of personal failing.
The most success I've had in actively dealing with things like this is when I am able to frame a situation for myself in an extra-moral way and actually believe it - i.e. that something is, like you said, a matter of habit-building and consistency, rather than ontological and exertional good-enough-ness. The tough part here is that many people understand this, cerebrally, but it takes drilling this perspective quite a lot to actually ingrain it into one's belief system.
There's a night and day difference, though, between "well I guess I couldn't do it after all" and "well I guess that's a one-day blip on a four-day streak", and people with 'motivational' difficulties also aren't that great at conceptualizing about & nurturing incremental progress towards an abstract goal, which this also helps immensely with.
All in all I love that your takeaway was, effectively, that 'motivation' can be seen as behavioral inertia that hasn't yet been solved by habit-training. It's not a poetic nitpick at all; at least in my view it's the fundamental operative basis for dealing with the phenomenon of procrastination.
Made an account just so I can thank you for this comment. You have done an amazing job of illustrating the problem of thinking of things in terms of motivation as well as moralizing it.
I'm going through a major depressive / procrastination episode. And now i'm asking myself, why can't I just apply the same thinking and approach I use for exercise and diet to the rest of my life. (I.E. it's just something I do, a habit I build on.). Epiphany for me. :)
I had made an account just to post it! It's warming as hell to know it could help give you a workable verbal framework.
This way of thinking isn't (yet?) /always/ something I'm able to just root myself in, down to the autonomic depths of my lizard-brain or whatever, and I definitely still slip into moments or swathes of variations on, "I am in some way fundamentally wrong/insufficient".
So, sure, it's not a panacea that lets you evade depressive troughs completely, BUT it lets you go through those with a supervisory lens that says, "was that thought/attitude/self-perception unambiguously extra-moral? no? then it's not real; it's just a shame narrative; carry on". That's MORE than enough for a shit-ton of cumulative and lasting progress.
It's a good point. We do easy things even though we're not motivated.
B J Fogg talks about motivation waves - motivation comes and goes like a wave. When you're riding high, Fogg recommends taking a hard action that will make future actions easier (register for a yoga class, go for a long run after months of not running).
When motivation is low, take the easiest step possible.
Over time, what we're familiar with (daily routines) become habitual and we don't need motivation.
I used to be a pro, but blocking out distractions (the easiest, most "fun" activity) helped me do more.
I know you didn't ask for advice, but if I were to give you just 1 bit of it, it's to block distractions in the browser (or unplug wifi) and put your phone in another room.
Then you'd get bored for a while, and then you'd take the easy work-related actions despite not being motivated.
> it's to block distractions in the browser (or unplug wifi) and put your phone in another room
Good advice, agreed - few months ago I started using two separate Windows accounts where I block all distracting sites on one of them. It's not perfect but does help.
I still find it a bit too easy to just switch accounts. What I'm going to try next is setting up limitations for certain times of day at router level.
I have found it helps if I put an entry into hosts file for 127.0.0.1 for all the sites that I waste time on.
Eventually I will go back in and update it when I feel I have caught up but it gives me a reminder when I can't go to the sites at all.
> For things that I don't have the motivation to do (things I procrastinate), my strategy is to start doing the smallest possible unit of that thing as I can.
I wanted to address this in a separate comment, especially given the prevalence in this thread of mentioning ADHD and its co-morbidities as further context for struggling with procrastination and 'motivation'.
It's important to be very aware about the ways to win and lose at what feels like the perpetual battle of trying to trick yourself into doing things, and for the crowd who can relate to this, I'd offer some caveats to what you said.
The operative point of "the smallest possible unit of that thing" is never, ever to systematically map out the entirety of a task and then select a small atomic subtask to do; that's just reaffirming your portrayal of something to yourself as insurmountable and monolithic.
Instead, choose the "smallest possible unit" that describes starting a task, and if the descriptions sound absurd then you're doing it right. For example, to a certain disposition, "do your laundry" or "do the dishes" basically invite avoidance, but "put your pair of teal socks into the hamper" or "turn on the faucet / wash one plate" is extremely easy to engage. What usually happens is you autopilot through a bunch of the task (it's OK if it's not all of it), and moreover you end up feeling great about yourself for doing more than you expected, which is strong positive reinforcement.
This is because you're not "shit at doing things"; you just need tricks to start doing things. And if the "smallest starting point descriptor" doesn't carry you through the entire task to completion, that's fine -- you can either parallelize a bunch of things this way and jump between them, and/or, your next "smallest starting point descriptor" is just the next step for that task anyway, so you can jump right back in.
This sounds like a hack, but after doing it for long enough, you realize it's just a much-needed refactoring.
"Doing the dishes" is made up of individual actions, guys. If the outcome of your actions is that your sink is "mostly clean, but has a bowl in it," that's...just fine!
Recently I started meditating, something I've tried to get into, but never have. I downloaded this app Balance which encourages daily practice (reminders, 3,5,10 guided meditations, etc). I am still not "motivated" to do it, but I don't need to be because it is just part of my schedule.
The reason I say this is that I feel like "building motivation" is kind of the wrong attitude. You won't like everything that you do (go to the gym, pay your bills, etc), but building a repeatable habit makes it so you don't need to feel motivated. This might be a nitpick, but the big change in thinking for me was around not having to be motivated to do something.