What Do You Do When You Have No Motivation?

There will be days when you feel no desire to do anything.

Today is one of those days for me.

What do you do when this happens?

I know what I do.

I start small.

I sat down to write this, and after the happenings of the day, I didn't want to write anything.

I didn't have anything in particular to write about.

Nothing seemed to be calling out for me to write.

The desire to do it did not exist.

So, I just started with something, just a little bit.

The thing about small starts is that when you keep the momentum going, eventually they lead to large results.

5 years ago, if you told me I would write over 300 articles within a year, I would have thought you were joking.

10 years ago, if you told me that I would stand on stages and talk to people about leadership, I would've laughed in your face.

15 years ago, if you told me that I would receive awards based on my ideas...

Well, 15 years ago you probably would have struggled to find me anywhere because I was fairly shy and didn't think I had ideas of any worth.

How did all that change for me?

It was small steps, here and there.

I took small steps to become more personable.

I started to think, and act, on ideas of what I could do with my life.

I started in accounting work, then moved to Leadership.

The more I dove into Leadership, the more I started to see the problems.

It led to small steps in other arenas, especially Psychophysiology which I can tell you, I had no talent for in school.

2 years ago, if you told me that I would regularly read scientific research papers to get the information I needed to help people become better Leaders, I probably would have just asked "Why?"

But it's been very useful.

All these aspects of my life only occurred though because I took small steps.

I started reading books.

When I found they weren't enough, I began to do courses.

When the courses didn't go deep enough, I went through certifications.

When the certifications showed me the flaws, it led to other industries.

When I saw the problems in the industries, where the arguments arose from, the only option was to go deeper.

That was to get into the research itself to see what it truly says.

So often, people think they understand what research is saying because they read certain parts of it.

The Title, the Subtitles, and the Conclusions.

I have found that often these are misleading, sometimes purposefully, but the deep body of the research isn't, and meta-analyses report findings more clearly.

Again, I didn't figure that out immediately.

It was one small step after another.

Often when I had no motivation.

Just like today.

When you take a small step, you learn, you adapt, you change.

Each step makes those changes appear larger and larger to others who are standing still.

Sadly, the reality isn't that success is hard, rather most people refuse to take a step.

When you stand in the same spot your entire life, everything "feels" far away, simply because you don't know what it feels like to take a step.

However, when you start taking small steps, you realize it's much easier than you imagined.

That doesn't mean it's "easy", just easier than you thought.

Most people struggle to write an article, so the solution is to not write an article.

Write a paragraph.

If that's too much, write a sentence.

If that's too much, just write a word.

That's what I did for this article.

I started with one sentence, then I thought of another.

Eventually, I had new ideas sprouting from what was forming.

What started as 1 sentence has now become over 600 words.

600 words in about 15 minutes.

If I were to apply that to an hour, I'd be looking at 2,400+ words (don't worry, I'll wrap up quickly).

Do that for a full day, you're at 19,200+ words.

Over a week, you have a book!

Do you see how quickly the tide can turn though?

But it only happens by taking a step.

What do you do when you have no motivation?

Start.

Start small, but start.

Then, see how far it takes you.