Motivation doesn’t show up consistently or at the right times. So, if you are constantly waiting for the moment you feel motivated you will never stick to what you intended to get done. Counterintuitively you need to complete tasks to feel positive reinforcement which will make you feel more motivated next time. So we need to learn how to stop letting our mood dictate our actions. This can help to increase our motivation which in turn improves our mood and motivation even more.
What even is motivation?
According to the Oxford Dictionary motivation is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way. For example, my motivation to go for a run may be to clear my head, to get fitter, to get somewhere on time or to keep myself safe. Don’t these all sound like excellent reasons to run?
Yet if my motivation is to keep myself safe I will run every single time without weighing up whether I am tired or feel like running. Whilst if I am running to get fitter there will be days when it is raining where I would rather stay inside, or mornings when I am tired and feeling a bit rubbish, and on those days the motivation to get fitter is not enough, and then again the next day and the next or there is another reason that my motivation just isn’t there.
Before you know it, it has been 3 weeks since you did that thing you wanted to do and now it feels even harder because you don’t feel as good at it.
What happens when we let our mood dictate our day?
What we naturally do is think about how we are feeling and then decide whether we feel like doing something. For example, I don’t feel great today so I don’t feel like cooking or I feel really energised today I am going to tidy the whole house. Does this sound like you?
And yes to some extent we should listen to our bodies if they are telling us that we need to slow down. But let’s look at what happens if we let our moods decide what to do for us. When we are feeling low in mood or energy, our body and mind want to do whatever is easiest and this is often staying in bed, watching Netflix or scrolling on our phones.
Your body wants to do this because it will avoid anything that could be difficult which in turn leads to a negative reinforcement cycle as your brain learns that every time you don’t want to do something if you stay in you don’t have to do it. Like a child who shouts whenever they are given vegetables until their parents stop trying to give them veg and now the child has learnt if I shout I don’t have to eat veg.
The problem with this is both what we said earlier about it becoming harder to then do the activity you planned, but also you will not get the positive reinforcement of completing something or doing something enjoyable.
So it both teaches your brain bad habits but also takes away that positive experience you have when you do something nice or even just you complete the dishes or you do that 10-minute workout. I am sure you can all relate to that little hit you get when you cross another thing off your to-do list even if it wasn’t something fun, or that buzz you might get when you get back from seeing a friend for dinner when only 2 hours ago you didn’t really want to go because you were tired.
What happens when we separate our actions from our mood?
So what would happen if we did not let our moods dictate our actions, what if we went screw you I am doing what I planned to do anyway?
Well, you would avoid that negative reinforcement cycle so your brain would learn that it does not get to avoid difficult things by making you stay in bed because you don’t let it. You also get that positive hit from getting something you planned to do done. That hit of positive feelings makes it more likely that you will do the activity again. When repeated over and over it makes it much more likely that you can stick to this as a habit going forward which increases your energy.
So that makes sense, but how do you make the switch and start being in charge of what you do rather than letting your mood choose for you? Because if it was that easy wouldn’t we have all done this already?
Part of managing this is simply realising that if we constantly wait for motivation it is unlikely to appear especially not at the time we want it or consistently but we increase the chances of being motivated by having previously done the activity even when we didn’t feel like it because we got that positive reinforcement.
By realising if we wait for the motivation to come we may never achieve what we hoped we would is a good place to start. It is also really useful to schedule your tasks so that you know that this is the time that I am going to do X.
Otherwise if you say I am going to meditate three times a week with no particular time or date you will just push it back and then you will never know when it is the time to push through the feeling of not wanting to do it because there will always be the yeah but it is only Tuesday so I can still fit it in and then it becomes oh well it is too late this week I will start this habit next week. The next thing to do is give it a go and I get it that feels tough! How can you just make yourself do something even when you don’t feel like it?
I have found a few things have helped me with this, the first one is the idea that I can do anything for 20 minutes.
So I will set myself a timer and think to myself it is just 20 minutes. This works well for me when I have a work task that I am putting off or housework that is piling up. Then after that 20 minutes, I will give myself a break for 10 minutes if I still feel like you know what this is just making me feel worse then I won’t push it but 9 times out of 10 after the first 20 minutes I feel motivated to carry on so I set my timer for another 20 minutes and I keep going, either with one large task or a few smaller ones.
This is just something that works for me so 20 minutes might be too much or too little for you so find out what sort of time you feel like “I could do almost any task for X minute”. For me, 20 minutes is long enough to make a reasonable dent in anything but is not too long as to be overwhelming and make me feel like I want to stop before the timer has finished because then I will go straight back to my blanket cocoon and watch more recipe videos or painting videos than is probably healthy for me.
The next two techniques that I found helpful came from the Atomic Habits book by James Clear.
The first is quite similar to what I have already said but this idea is even shorter and can take just 2 minutes. In the book, James talks about running as an example and he says to start with just the first step of the task so with running get your running kit on and leave the house running for just two minutes and then come back home, repeat this the next few times. The idea is that you have already done the hard part of getting yourself out of the door.
So after the first week or so of just doing two minutes, you will think this is pointless I may as well actually go for a run seeing as I am ready and out the door in my running kit. But because you have already set up the habit of getting to that point regardless of if you feel like it because it is only 2 minutes right? You are more likely to get yourself going. I find this technique useful when I am trying to start a new practice or get back into it after I have been unwell, or away from home for a while.
The final one is habit stacking which is also from the book Atomic Habits. This is the idea that a task that you find difficult to do, maybe doing the dishes after dinner you pair with an enjoyable activity such as listening to your favourite podcast. You then only allow yourself to do the favourable task when you are doing the task you are trying to avoid. That way you trick your brain into wanting to do this activity because you want to do the thing that you enjoy. This is a great way of gifting yourself that little bit of motivation to get yourself going.
What I would say with this technique is it is key that you only let yourself do the enjoyable activity whilst doing the task you would rather enjoy. I was doing well with only listening to my favourite podcast on a run and then one week I listened to it whilst walking to work and all of a sudden I did not feel the motivation to run to listen to it. As if my brain had figured out oh we could just not run and you will still enjoy listening to that podcast later.
Take away
So the first thing that you need to do is realise that waiting for motivation will not help you to get things done because motivation does not just appear consistently, there will always be days or weeks that you do not feel like it. As counterintuitive as it sounds the best way to be more motivated is just to do what you set out to do regardless of how you feel about it and this way you get that hit of positive reinforcement which will make you more motivated next time. We have then had a look at some techniques to help you to do those tasks when you aren’t feeling it.
Action points
Give it a go schedule in those tasks that you usually put off and try one of the techniques to see if you can get yourself over the hurdle just to give it a go. Then see how that impacts your motivation to do the task next time.
I will give it a go with you, my running routine has been completely inconsistent for about 3 years now despite me knowing that when I run regularly I feel my best. Life is pretty busy at the moment but I am going to give these techniques a go and see what works best for me to run consistently 2 times a week and then I will report back what I found and what worked best for me.
Leave a Reply