How do you handle the lack of motivation?

Motivation is a feeling that comes and goes. Truth is - I'm not motivated to do most of the things in life. I'd rather watch Reels all day long than go to the gym, cook healthy, and work on my side project.

If you rely on motivation - you will fail miserably. Of course, there could be long periods of motivation, but as soon as something becomes too hard, or too boring - you lose motivation.

So work on discipline instead of motivation. Motivation is "I FEEL like doing it now, so I will" or "I FEEL like not doing it now, so I wont". Discipline is "I HAVE to do it now, so I will, no matter how I feel".

The first rule I learned when embarking on this journey was that you should rely on your discipline rather than your motivation. Show up on a daily basis. Do whatever you want. Open your laptop, change the font or button color, and then close it. Make it a rule that you never miss two days in a row.
There will be days when you are unmotivated, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
In terms of practical advice:
Establish deadlines: A goal is a dream with a deadline - Napoleon Hill
Workout: Your body reciprocates what you give him. I can't recall ever going to the gym in the morning and feeling unmotivated at any point during the day.
Eat the frog: Begin with the most difficult task. Every task after that will feel like a game.
Delay your breakfast: Try completing the most difficult tasks before breakfast because glucose causes fatigue, which your brain can interpret as an unmotivated feeling.

Hi there, first time poster here. I think the best way to deal with "shiny object syndrome" is not to fight it, but to scratch that itch while also building your main thing.

As much as certain icons are lauded for eating or wearing the same thing every day, I find it a bit extreme and unbalanced.

I would say keep working on your main project, but allocate a little time on the side to explore something else that piques your interest. You might find some new insights and inspiration that could help move your main project forward. Or you might find that doing the "other thing" has more traction, either with your users or your passion to build the thing. People and companies pivot all the time.

I think having a good balance of depth-first search and breadth-first search is good and quite healthy.

I hope that's useful to you.

Another useful thing for me is to read about the history of different entrepreneurs and how they have overcome those difficult moments.
Some books that may interest you are the biography of Steve Jobs or Amazon unleashed (the story of jeff bezos)

In my newsletter I am sharing stories of solopreneurs to know how they overcome these moments too: https://fintiux.com/newsletter/

I'll be unmotivated, but do it anyway😁

Because, my WHY is clear to me.

Because, I've calculated the risk and developed a process that I'm just going to follow.

Because, I clearly know when to exit and when not to.

All the best 👍

Coffee

Ah! well one of the ways I am trying to stay motivated is to accomplish the small task of a huge project. One step at a time, and it has really helped me

Perhaps try changing your environment where you're surrounded by like-minded individuals...

I feel like the "start X businesses in Y days" type content out there doesn't help either. We all have different personalities and tolerances for perfectionism. My philosophy to working on my side projects is to to treat it the same as I do running up a hill - look only at my feet and don't fucking stop no matter how slow I'm going.

I'd say I am in same shoes. I'm in product discovery stage, but I launched my product last month, I'm trying to see how users use my app and find PMF from there. I am also working in a big corp, so my brain is always distracted.

One thing I found really effective is to time box and put myself in a schedule. That way, I don't have to motivated through out the day - just once when I make my schedule. Rest is just following orders from my calendar.

Everyone is facing this challenge nowadays... too many attention suckers around! I struggle with this too on a regular basis, while having to split time between running an agency, building a SaaS product and writing a Ph.D. thesis... Here's what's working for me these days:

• Strict discipline: good food, workouts, sleep hours (at least 8 hrs/night!). Despite the hype, Jocko Willink's "Discipline Equals Freedom" principle really works. Just takes time to adopt and lots of effort not to give up. Extra points if you try BJJ 🥋 -- this gift just keeps on giving;

• Do not rely on spontaneous spurs of motivation to get something done. Consistency trumps short-term spikes of excitement. My research advisor's top suggestion to me on writing is to commit 1-2 hrs every morning, even if the yield is not great. Over time, you build up the skill, and you produce enough breadcrumbs to publish something meaningful;

• Drop all SoMe accounts (except for IH, of course). Reduce input noise;

• Give your brain time to roam. Read about Einstein's habit of going for a walk. The guy definitely had some good insight into how to come up with ideas 😉;

• Explore & participate in local & virtual meetups with folks like yourself. A lot of myths/fears/misconceptions are broken down by seeing others achieve what you're dreaming of (hence all of us being here on IH). Few years ago I would never think I could get an internship at Google... until I've seen someone else do it, which pushed me to apply, get in, and crush it;

And finally (this took me some time to come to terms with): we all slip up from time to time, but we must forgive ourselves. We have a tendency to build all of these perfect plans, which often don't pass the baptism by fire. But that's okay. Because you're on a truly challenging path. Ideas get crushed, disappointment becomes overwhelming. Yet, we must keep pushing.

Good luck, and I'm looking forward to reading about your new 🦄 on IH some time soon 😉

Something useful for me in those moments is think on youyourself in a few years.

How do you see yourself in 2026? You have achieved your goals?

Think that this is just temporal.

Keep working with discipline

Imagine how your story would be like in a few years, if you've read/heard about most successful people they had a rough, challenging lonely period.
Then imagine this is that for you and in a few years you will be telling the story of how you got turned down 100x, nothing would work and you had to build from scratch etc.

Either that or blast lose yourself by eminem on loop

You have to see progress to keep the energy high. Create a metric and track your progress. In the validation phase progress is updating your estimate on the probability of the project succeeding.

When building it could be #days until launch.

Anyway, imo taking months to validate one idea is way too long.

It might sound too simple and obvious... but exercise is KEY for me. Even just a 10 minute slow jog helps. Or a cold shower also works for me when I'm in a rut 🥶

Keep your brain fresh, sharp and energy levels high!

Build it in public, and celebrate every small win.

Validate it first before building it.

Don't set too high expectations, if it doesn't gain any interest or demand, it's no problem to pivot.

I think that the best way to stay motivated is to have a goal in mind.
When you started the project you were probably super motivated because you had a goal of completing the project, helping people, getting rich or whatever in mind.
However, at some point you replace the goal with numerous tasks and just lose motivation in the process.
So, I think that ultimately you need to align yourself from time to time with the goals you want to reach!

I'm new so I don't have much weight behind my words, but as a self taught programmer I struggled with motivation in the beginning quite a bit and really had to get down and dirty in terms of how I wanted to approach this. I started off with the basics like following a schedule and shit like that. I couldn't pull it off. I tried all of these different studying techniques, different schedules, even doing the stupid take a cold shower in the morning bullshit, but then I had one of those angry, "that's enough" moments where I decided; fuck everything everyone else has been telling me to do. Where's my voice? What do I think? What philosophy do I resonate with? What gets me fired up? What do I need to tell myself to code when I don't feel like it? I decided upon a set of core values and beliefs that I resonated with and well . . . now I have the OPPOSITE problem of having to limit the amount of coding I do because I like it so much and once I start it just doesn't stop. This was a massive difference for me and I have a hypothesis as to why this happened: I think Alex Hormozi, and many others (I think Channing even mentioned this) are correct when they say balance is bullshit. I know what you're gonna say . . . burnout, but that's not real. Burnout is not taking care of mental health and shit like that, not doing something you like too often. Something about measuring in "hours" was fucking poison to my productivity, and once I started being task and project oriented I got much more done.

Another thing that might be worth mentioning is that I was extremely afraid of failing. "If failure isn't an option, neither is success." - Seth Godin

Ya had to learn how to detach from the damn result and all of that shit, but my point is that I went from feeling lazy and guilty for not coding much, like 1 hour a week, to now 12 hours, 7 days a week! It's not a lot for me because it's art. And people that do art try to do more and people that do work try to do less. (more Seth Godin shit, god I love that guy)

So the first problem to solve is how to keep yourself motivated. for some days make that your primary project

As far as I know, no one is forever, continuously or consistently motivated. everyone does something or the other in their daily routine to either keep the motivation up, or to bring it back once gone.
Try to treat yourself as subject or a client, and come up with creative ideas to motivate your client everyday. track all the things that you do, monitor your motivation and output levels, create process for yourself. document everything for your own use.
and most importantly, regularity is the key. you dont need to be motivated everyday, but at least be regular.

ps: trying all of the above for myself these days. so far so good