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>Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use p

>Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use pathetically achievable goals This. I was chatting with a friend and he asked me about how I get motivated. My answer is that I abstract away the motivation with a process. For instance, I used to work out a lot when I was younger and then stopped.. But when I wanted to work out recently, what I did to start the habit wasn't to go to the gym because that's a "new thing", an action and I'm a "procrastinator".. I incorporated working out with the act of taking a shower and they became one, so each time I was about to take a shower, I'd do a few hundred push ups, then get in the shower and do a 100 successive squats and that was it. It's not much but it beats nothing. If I imagined I had to wear clothes, go out somewhere, work out, then come back and take a shower, I wouldn't do it.. As a side note, when I was in college, my commute was 6 hours and arriving late to class. Then they added a university bus. I had to take a bus to get to the Uni bus and I had to wake up early, so I said "why not work out while I'm at it". Woke up at 4h30 and a good work out, shower and food, and about 30 minutes of review study. The energy I had through the whole day was amazing.

faitswulff 10y ago
That's a good point. Combining actions that you already execute with habits you would like to develop can be a powerful thing. To take the gym example further, I realized that I needed to be doing more cardio (any cardio at all), but the treadmill was the most boring activity on earth. I could only spend a few minutes on it before getting bored. To combat this, I started listening to an audio language lesson in a foreign language that I'd been meaning to learn while walking on the treadmill. Pretty soon, I ended up spending 20+ minute chunks of time on the treadmill while learning my target language, which amplified both of the habits that I wanted.

faitswulff 10y ago

That's a good point. Combining actions that you already execute with habits you would like to develop can be a powerful thing. To take the gym example further, I realized that I needed to be doing more cardio (any cardio at all), but the treadmill was the most boring activity on earth. I could only spend a few minutes on it before getting bored. To combat this, I started listening to an audio language lesson in a foreign language that I'd been meaning to learn while walking on the treadmill. Pretty soon, I ended up spending 20+ minute chunks of time on the treadmill while learning my target language, which amplified both of the habits that I wanted.