Action Precedes Motivation
I often think about the fleeting nature of motivation. I catch myself waiting for it to arrive, like I might await a bus.
The Additive Identity
It’s common for me to feel the most motivated during a long, hard day at my job. Equally, it’s hard for me to get into the working mood if the clock strikes ten and I haven’t yet sunk my teeth into something big.
Rarely will you want to start cooking, but once you’ve started you’ll find it’s less effort than you thought; perhaps even enjoyable. Emptying the kitchen bin is a chore, but as you walk that stinking bag outside you might notice you don’t mind moving around & getting some fresh air. How many times have you dreaded mowing the lawn, only to be disappointed it’s over so soon?
I speak in literals for sake of illustration. Some chores you will always hate, no matter what. Others will have you arguing they’re not chores at all. My point addresses those middle-of-the-road mundane must-dos of modern life, whatever they may be for you.
Your mind has many functions. Two are ‘work’ and ‘play’. It is easy to continue working once started, and trivial to extend play. Switching between the two is difficult, and requires some level of willpower. Observe that motivation is a productivity multiplier, and it never arrives in the absence of said productivity.
The Curse of the Infinite Scroll
The smartphone is one of the single most groundbreaking inventions. Ever. A close second being humorous juxtaposition. It’s the modern multi-tool, and a byproduct of this is the thinning & erasure of the line between work and play. Picture this - you’re writing an import email to a colleague. Ping! A notification from Facebook tells you that a friend commented on a post. Opening it out of habit, you see that Geoff has commented one of his friends’ names below a video of an AI-generated bird. You don’t care, and in fact, you haven’t spoken to Geoff in years. Instinctively, you scroll. A video of a man falling over. An advert for a handbag on a Chinese drop-shipping site. A carousel of the same five suggested friends that Facebook has been showing you for weeks. You scroll on.
Fifteen minutes have passed, and you suddenly snap out of a stupor you were unaware you were in. At no point in the last fifteen minutes did Facebook add any value to your life. You now feel sluggish and unmotivated, a byproduct of crashing from the high dopamine release Facebook is designed to foist upon your body. Indeed, this isn’t your fault. Social media companies employ rooms full of people to design interfaces that boost the chance of you accidentally clicking on an advert, or other equally dubious outcomes that Ed Zitron covers in a much more articulate way than I ever could.
“That email still needs writing,” you contemplate. “I’ll do it later.”
Take some time to form a plan or routine that rebuilds the conceptual wall between work and play, especially in the context of using your mobile phone. Perhaps only allow yourself to use social media applications between the hours of 18:00 and 20:00. Or set a screen time limit. You have options, and taking action now may improve your life significantly.
Instead of awaiting that bus, just start walking. Find it within you to just start, and motivation will find you, and help you along the way.