How To Even…Motivate Yourself

By Michael Gushue & CL Bledsoe

Life, amirite? Yesterday, you did all the things, but today, you’re having trouble finishing a yawn. That’s how it goes. It’s not even that you tired yourself out, exactly, you just burned through your motivation. But that makes no sense, right? Motivation isn’t a finite thing, like Cheetos or patience or a government that works on behalf of the people. As long as you eat healthy meals, get plenty of rest, and aren’t chained to the floor of a cavern, you should be perfectly able to be productive pretty much all the time, right? Then why is it so hard to get going sometimes?

In the words of a mediocre white male: uhm, actually, not a lot of people realize this, but motivation is in fact finite. (Fooled you!) We’re born with a specific amount, and once that’s used up, we’re screwed. You’ve probably met older people who seem to be very active and thought to yourself how much you’d like to emulate them when you’re their age, right? Well, the truth is, they were probably lazy af when they were younger. Now, they’ve got all this motivation to burn off before they die. On the flipside, someone who seems to be really unmotivated at a youngish age was probably really motivated as a baby. Unfortunately, they used it all up too soon, and now they’re left to lie on the couch, binge watching Garfield cartoons, too lazy to even change the channel…