It's Not Motivation, It's Energy

Motivation Isn't Your Problem, You've Got Ideas, Right?

There's a lot of people in my life who tell me they "wish they could work on their project" or generally "just do stuff they want to," but complain that they lack the motivation or willpower to follow through. I disagree with this sentiment, since the "want to do" is motivation enough. They often regale me with some very cool ideas, then do nothing with them. Often, these ideas and plans can only be executed by them, or people like them, but they just don't make progress.

Most likely, they have an energy problem.

In my opinion, life is just one big resource management game. There's a lot of things you (the character) are capable of doing, but it all comes down to how much you can do at a time, and where your resources are going towards. It doesn't matter if you're a so-called highly driven person, if you're physical or mental meters are drained, you won't be doing anything.

You have to know your limits and how to play around them.

Those who are able to optimize their energy are the one's I see building the cool stuff. I don't mean only energy useage either, but how they regenerate too. Your energy management is life or death between shipping and stalling.

Managing the Energy Meter

If you want to manage your energy better, you'll need to first get good at understanding where you're leaking it. There are a lot of things that are out there to vamp your energy, and knowing what they are and dealing with them accordingly is the first step to finally getting your MVP finished.

Managing your energy meter is not unlike managing a stamina bar in a Souls-like. The more actions you take, the more decisions you make, the more conversations you have, the more your bar depletes. Figuring out the rhythm to engage with these in is important for good managmeent.

Some common energy leaks in no particular order are:

• Constant task-switching (coding, meetings, etc.)
• Decision fatigue
• Overcommitting
• Physical inactivity
• Digital overload
• Chasing perfection
• Toxic relationships with people (and co-workers alike)
• Poor prioritization

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can get an idea of things that are probably draining your energy. We have to juggle these things to ensure we still have energy to do what we want to, though.

Learning the Rhythm

Now, some common ways I personally deal with this stuff. Most of this is going to sound like hippie advice (or really generic), but those guys are onto something.

• Better scheduling

By creating a schedule that allows for more continuous flows of work, you get less fatigued. Jumping around from different types of tasks is just too mentally taxing. A better schedule will help you stop overcommitting to things as well, which is another energy vampire.

• Cut down on decisions

Having to make decisions for the most inane things will deplete the amount of decisions you can make in a day. Stop wasting time on "what should I eat today," and definitely don't make decisions for other people because they asked. In fact, look to offload any decisions you have to make to others as much as you can. Plan your meals in advance on a Sunday. Whatever it takes.

• Go for walks

Going for a walk 2-3 times a day is honestly a life hack. I recommend leaving your phone behind and just strolling aimlessly. It's physically engaging and promotes blood flow to the brain. I also recommend stretching, especially those hip muscles. I recommend investing in on of these. No one is safe from tight muscles.

• Cut down unecessary screen time

Do you really need to check every email, every discord message as it comes in? Phones and apps have special permissions nowadays to limit when you get notifications or how often you can access things. Use them. Constantly swapping to look at social media, email, or other things is a form of task-switching, which is just going to drain your energy.

• Stop chasing perfect, just ship

The biggest source of paralysis is trying to make sure every little thing is perfect before you ship. Most people don't care, and honestly, your 3 users aren't going to care that much either. Perfectionism is an invisible wall that tricks you into thinking your feature isn't good enough.

Every time you tweak, revise, and second-guess is a drain on your energy bar. Most iterations before real feedback is a waste anyways. If your feature works, isn't completely buggy, you might as well ship and then start iterating from there. Breaking everything into a smaller task cycle is beneficial to snowballing, helping regenerate energy.

• Cut out people who are energy parasites

This should be simple enough to understand, but it's pretty difficult to execute on. Most people understand who around them are energy parasites but keep engaging with them. This is more of a personal battle, but just stop interacting with them. The gains you'll see within a week will be enormous.

• Prioritize better

Do you want to build or do you want to mess around? When creating your schedule (which doesn't have to be so formal by the way), ensure you're building in meaningful progress into it. Additionally, don't fall into the discouragement trap if you think something is taking too long, or other fail cases. Understanding your own psychology of loss and failure is important to breaking out of energy holes that will keep you from completing what you want to do.

Don't Fight Progress

Everyone has their own way of doing stuff. I drink my cup of coffee at 11am every day. I drink decaf throughout the day to stay alert. I work best at 11pm to 2am. Knowing your own rhythm (and experimenting to optimize it) is important. Don't be shy and fight against it either, it doesn't need to be socially acceptable to everyone.

I don't have any crazy advice when it comes to figuring out your optimal conditions. That's something personal, but you should first get good at recognizing what's bogging you down. Only then can you really start optimizing.

Bringing It All Together

At the end of the day, you're going to need to execute on the following:

• Better cognitive load balancing
• Schedules that help you operate your energy meter better
• Stretch your psoas
• Remove the time for wallowing
• Work towards smaller wins

That's your shortlist to start executing on your motivation.

Most of you don't have an issue with motivation, your ideas are sound and you have some clue of what you need to do. Waking up in the morning "feeling like you don't want to do anything" is your main problem.