Vol. 4, Issue 12: Imma Break You Off, Let Me Be Your Motivation

Getting Shit Done When You Don't Want To Get Shit Done

I’m just getting over a summer cold.

If you think about it, there’s something particularly unfair about getting sick in the summer. It’s strangely more demoralizing than getting the flu in the winter, because all you want to do is be outside during the summer doing stuff that you specifically can’t do in the winter.*. In the winter, blankets, soup and the literal worst TV you can think of. In the summer, sweat, discomfort and inconvenience.

*Unless you live in LA like I do, then you can do those things in the winter too, but the offset is that you have to sit in unimaginable traffic and consider driving off of a bridge literally all the time

Because here’s the thing about a summer cold: it’s not debilitating; just annoying. So you wind up just pressing on through whatever your day is: video calls, coffee meetings, that one email that you’ve been sitting on for two weeks because it’s in the not urgent, not important bucket but you do need to respond because if you don’t soon, it’s going to shift into the urgent bucket pretty quickly (while remaining unimportant) and someone is going to really be up your ass about it and it’s like guys there has to be something bigger for you to focus on than this specific thing. No? Just me?

The summer cold is demotivating*. It got me asking the question: What do you do when you’re supposed to be productive but you just don’t have it in you? What do you do when you simply have to get something done, but you had a poor night’s sleep? Or your kids have been particular jerks? Or, and I cannot stress this enough as a viable thing, you just don’t have it today?

*That was the cold open. Please hold your applause until the end for that world class pun. And also you're welcome for that world class pun

Here’s the problem with motivation: it’s the least reliable partner you have*. It’s fickle, striking at unpredictable and sometimes inconvenient times. It’s fleeting, coming and going as it pleases. And frankly, it tends to abandon you just when you need it most or at the worst possible moment.

*Even more unreliable than that one friend - you know who I’m talking about

But I’m gonna let motivation off the hook a bit here: motivation may be fickle, but it almost always follows quickly when you take action. To state that slightly differently, we often wait for motivation to take action, but the reality is that it’s action that precedes motivation.

The way that I like to think about this is a story I often tell about my kids. When my kids were little and friends and family would come over to visit, the visitors would often say to my kids “do you want to play with me?”* And my kids would basically tell them to fuck off and do their own thing. My advice was always to just sit on the floor and pick up one of their toys and play with it. The kids will come over. And sure enough, when they sat and started playing, the kids would come over and play with them.

*My kids today would call this “pick me” behavior

So let’s say it again for the people in the back: action precedes motivation. But that begs another important question: how to take action when you don’t want to?

I think there’s a few things there, because when you’re not motivated to do something it all feels heavier. Think about how when someone calls you and you miss the call or can’t take it. The longer you wait to call them back, the more difficult it becomes to call them back* - you start to think about them giving you guilt for taking so long to call back or that they’ll be upset with you, so you keep putting it off.

*Reminder to call someone. They miss you

When I’m in this state, I like to think about reframing the effort. No one is perfect. No one is constantly motivated. So lower the bar a little temporarily to keep some forward momentum. Don’t answer every email; answer the really important ones. Don’t write 1000 words; write 100. And to use the call example, don’t hop on the phone thinking you need a 30 minute phone call; a quick call to say “hey, I’ve been thinking about you, but I’m not feeling 100%, so I wanted to say hi and let you know that I’ll call again soon and I love you.” Turn the tables and create short term goals that are attainable.

If you haven’t read the book Atomic Habits*, I would highly recommend the book. There’s a lot of incredible insight in there, but the way he frames this habit is through the construct of “Reduce the Scope, Keep the Streak” - sometimes doing anything is something. Momentum > Intensity.

*There are very few books in the genre of Atomic Habits (meaning non-fiction books that have a thesis and then 9,000 examples of the same exact type) that I read all the way through. Usually by the 3rd example, I’m like “OK, I get it,” but this was a rare exception where I read the whole thing. FWIW. YMMV. OMG, right?

And in case it wasn’t abundantly clear, this isn’t just about being sick. This applies to all human emotion where we just need to give ourselves a bit of grace because we can’t possibly be firing on all cylinders all the time. It applies to grief, burnout, stress, self-doubt. You can’t live your life and be your best self through these things, while also punishing yourself for not being as productive as you think you should be. Motivation is the luxury; discipline and grace are the infrastructure, so even when you don’t have full power, showing up in a small way is a signal to yourself that you’re still in the game.

The reality is you don’t have to be operating at 100% all the time to be effective. Doing something - anything - even poorly, slowly, whatever is always better than doing nothing while waiting to feel lightning strike.

The trick isn’t staying motivated.

The trick is reminding yourself that it’s OK to be less than perfect.

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OK, folks. We’ve been busy at JPEG HQ, so a few interesting notes:

Leadership In is locked in and Greg and I are finalizing those launch plans this week. Which is extremely exciting. That’s OK, So Media in conjunction with Greg’s truly fantastic consultancy Chelsea Strategies.

I’ve written a couple of things for

Cognitive Film Society

and will continue to do so as inspiration strikes, but I’m also thrilled to announce that I’ve joined their board and that I’ll be exploring options through the autumn to bring CFS to the west coast. Extremely exciting. If you’re in the LA area and want to collab on that, reach out to me!

Last thing, I cannot thank everyone enough for the support on everything that I’m doing. I’m pursuing a bunch of passion projects and the response from our community has been overwhelming.