How do you motivate yourself?

[Draper Mel]

Quoth Skarredmind

I don't wanna be that guy... (a statemet which of course is always followed by being that guy) but you might want to talk to your doctor about some meds for this (not having $$ does make it tough, I know).

I am on meds. Oh believe me, this would have been a VERY different question if I wasn't on meds.

Mainly it's the boredom that drags me down. I'm also a champion procrastinator. And I'm very good at letting myself blow things off or ignore lists or self set goals. I haven't managed to get up any earlier, but I have taken a walk the last couple days, and done some cleaning and other stuff I wanted to do.

It's a start. I've just never managed to be disciplined at all.

[Maria]

It'll perhaps sound trite but seriously, you described me almost exactly, in your posts. I've quit college twice, mostly because I can't seem to muster up the discipline to teach myself discipline -- imagine that.

People drain me in general, but I have to have external accountability or whatever, if I'm going to learn any level of discipline and motivation. I've tried to learn on my own and had precisely zero success, and it can really tear up one's sense of self-worth to go through that. I have one friend trained to text/email/IM and ask what's my plan for tomorrow, and how today's plan went. I chose someone who I value enough to care what they think of me, but really I could probably have chosen anyone. It's not remotely perfect, but in the past six months, I've built better habits because of it. It helps a lot to talk about my plans and things that need to get done. Somehow, saying it to other people makes it more real than just making lists for myself.

I'm pretty sure that I could go right back to those unwanted choices today if I stopped fighting. It sounds funny that a person could want to succeed so badly, and have it be such a huge fight -- you'd think that desire would be motivation enough for me. Just isn't how life works sometimes, though.

[Der Cute]

If you're a procrastinator, how then did you get yourself to post this? :P. No. Really. Think about it. It is something you WANT to do.
One trouble with depression is that you "want" something - like to go exercise or get outside or gardening etc. Well, with my depression, Depression argues "no, you don't want that. I'm going to say I don't want to. Let's argue that now". And it goes..and I don't let myself..
Ahem. Back.

I wanted to volunteer. Because advice came to me a long time ago: If you're going to be unemployed for a while (I've been out for over a year), go volunteer, it fills a gap in your resume' and keeps you busy.
So I did. Heh. I went to a food bank to ask about being a client, was told they were closed that day. Then I asked "Oh hey, what about volunteering? Do you need bodies?" They said yes, and to call in the AM. I've been there since November. It has a schedule, a routine I've COMMITTED TO (like work!), rewards, social interaction etc.
I really truly WANTED to volunteer. I've been clients at food banks before, and my personal thread on that is "I don't need it as much as other people do, take as little as you need, do better with money" so I could identify helping at a food bank.

Earlier this year I also got a wild hair up my ass about the ugly strip of dirt in front of the building. It's now flowers and container gardening. (that was my anxiety shit). I had committed myself (half way through) to working on it. Who wants to look at plain mulch and 2 or 3 flowers?

So. Not just get ass out of bed. What makes you tick? Can you find a place to do that?

That goes right along with Maria - accountability.

[Andara Bledin]

Re: Procrastination and Wants

It's really easy to want things, and to want to do things. It's also really easy to not do things.

It's not a matter of depression, but of motivation (although depression can and often does have a detrimental effect on motivation).

I have been depressed a couple of times in my life and it makes getting out of bed feel pointless, and staying in bed also pointless, and you end up staying in bed only because it takes less effort than actually getting out of bed would take. Then, when you finally have to get up for something, you end up staying up so that you don't have to work up the effort it took to get up the first time again.

Lack of motivation is another thing entirely, and something I've been plagued with most of my life, and something that's only gotten worse as I get older.

If it's something I can put off to another day, you can bet that I will put it off and rarely be wrong. Even if it's something that I can't really put off but that the consequences for putting off won't be too terrible, I'm likely to put it off.

It's really difficult to get other people to understand how hard it can be to start moving.

Once I'm going, then I'm going and I'll keep going until I reach a stopping point, and then it's back to the same mental calculation of how much effort it'll take to get going again versus what sort of consequences will befall me should I choose not to.

For me, it's only things with a physical component to them. Doing chores, going out, stuff like that.

Mental tasks are a different matter entirely, and subject to an entirely different set of motivational and disciplinary issues. Anything mental I will dive into with relish, and it's only a matter of whether there is a conflicting, more enjoyable or more personal task to be done.

I have literally spent entire evenings working on research projects purely because the right person asked for help at the right time. I cannot even count the number and variety of data-related projects I've taken on at work.

^-.-^