How Do I Get Motivated When I Have No Motivation?
In August, I wrote an article called Why Am I So Lazy and Unmotivated? What’s Really Going On. Apparently, several of you liked it because it became one of our more-read articles.
And honestly, I’m not surprised. This is an ongoing conversation with so many people I know, and one I hear all the time in the counseling room. It usually starts with, “I have no motivation.” As the conversation progresses, however, it often turns into, “I’m just lazy.”
Well, if you read the first article, you already know that’s not necessarily true.
But since this is such a common struggle, I thought we needed a Part Two. Figuring out why you feel unmotivated is helpful, but eventually we have to answer the next question:
Okay, so how do I actually get myself moving again?
If you haven’t read the first article, go over there first. Then come back, and let’s talk about how you can start turning things around.
Sound good? Okay. Let’s dive in.
First, Why Don’t I Feel Motivated?
Before we talk about getting motivated, we need to make sure we aren’t asking motivation to solve a completely different problem.
Motivation doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Sleep, physical health, stress, depression, anxiety, relationships, work, finances, our surroundings, and whether something feels meaningful can all affect our willingness and ability to act.
“I have no motivation” may actually mean, “I’m exhausted.” Another person may be overwhelmed and have no idea where to begin. Anxiety can make us avoid the very thing we know needs our attention, while months of pushing too hard can leave our bodies and brains asking for something other than another productivity hack. And, if we’re willing to admit it, we may simply not want to do the thing we keep insisting we should want to do.
That’s why I wrote Part One. If you’re struggling to understand what is behind your lack of motivation, start there. You might also want to read Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You, which explores self-sabotage and the ways we can unknowingly get in our own way. We aren’t going to solve sleep deprivation, depression, burnout, or a job you hate by buying a prettier planner.
But let’s say you’ve done some of that work. You know you’re not lazy. You’re reasonably rested. Nothing major is going on. There are simply things in your life that matter to you, and you cannot seem to make yourself do them.
For that, let me introduce you to Jane.
See Jane Make a Plan
Sunday night, Jane has a plan.
Tomorrow she is going to get up earlier and exercise. She’s going to eat a decent breakfast, remember her water, get to work on time, and finally spend 30 minutes on that project she’s been putting off. Maybe she’ll even throw in a load of laundry before work.
Sunday Night Jane is impressive.
Then Monday morning arrives.
The alarm goes off, and the woman who made all those excellent decisions eight hours ago is suddenly nowhere to be found. Jane hits snooze. By the time she gets up, there isn’t enough time for the workout. She needs to get ready for work. She’ll walk later.
Then the day starts. Someone needs something. There are emails to answer and a meeting that runs long. Jane realizes the lunch she so responsibly prepared is sitting in the refrigerator at home. By late afternoon, the idea of exercising after work has lost whatever charm it once possessed.
She gets home, eats dinner and sits down for just a minute. We all know how this story ends.
See Jane plan. See Jane snooze. See Jane decide she’ll start tomorrow.
Eventually, Jane starts doing something many of us do. She doesn’t examine the plan. She examines herself.
Why can’t I ever stick with anything? I have no motivation.
Give it another few minutes and its nasty little friend will probably show up too: I’m just lazy.
But maybe Jane isn’t lazy at all. Maybe we need to look at what actually happened.
Maybe Motivation Isn’t the Problem
Jane wanted to exercise. She decided to exercise. She may have been downright enthusiastic about exercising Sunday night. What she didn’t do was make the behavior particularly easy or decide exactly when it would happen.
That matters because wanting to do something is only one piece of actually doing it. The behavior also has to be manageable in real life, and something has to prompt us to begin.
“I’m going to work out tomorrow” sounds like a plan until tomorrow arrives. When are you working out? Where? For how long? What are you doing? What happens if you hit snooze?
We have a remarkable tendency to make vague plans and then blame our character when we don’t follow them.
So let’s stop asking Jane, “Why can’t you make yourself do this?” and ask a better question:
What got in the way?
Now we have somewhere to go.
See Jane Try Again
Tuesday night, Jane makes another plan. This time, she decides that after her first cup of coffee Wednesday morning, she will put on her shoes and walk for ten minutes.
Ten minutes may not sound particularly impressive, but that’s part of the point. Jane isn’t promising herself a new body, a new life and a personality transplant by Friday. She has simply decided what she is going to do, when she is going to do it, and how to make starting relatively easy.
This works because our brains do better with something concrete than with vague intentions. “I need to exercise more” leaves us another decision to make tomorrow. “After my coffee, I walk for ten minutes” has already made the decision.
We can spend a remarkable amount of energy deciding whether we’re going to do something we’ve already decided we want to do.
Wednesday morning arrives. Jane drinks the coffee. She sees the shoes.
And she does not want to walk.
See Jane drink coffee. See Jane stare at shoes. See Jane remain completely unmotivated.
Here’s the first thing you probably don’t want me to tell you: you may need to stop waiting to feel motivated. I know. Rude.
How Do I Get Motivated When I Have No Motivation?
Sometimes Action Comes First
We tend to imagine motivation working in a nice, orderly sequence. First I will feel motivated. Then I will exercise, clean the kitchen, make the appointment, write the chapter, or deal with whatever unfortunate situation has developed in the laundry room.
Unfortunately, human behavior is not always that cooperative.
Sometimes we have the sequence backward. Taking action can create the sense of accomplishment, pleasure or momentum that helps motivation catch up. This is one reason scheduling meaningful and rewarding activities is used in behavioral approaches to depression. We don’t always wait for someone to feel better before helping her begin doing some of the things that matter to her again.
This does not mean cleaning your kitchen cures depression. Please do not tell the internet I said that.
For Jane, it means she doesn’t have to settle the question of whether she feels like walking before she puts on her shoes. She can sincerely want to become stronger and sincerely want to stay inside drinking coffee. Both things can be true.
So Jane puts on the shoes.
Maybe she still doesn’t want to walk. She walks anyway. Ten minutes later, she’s done. Perhaps she feels better. Perhaps she feels accomplished. Perhaps she simply thinks, Well, that wasn’t terrible.
All three count.
And if Jane wants to make the walk a little more appealing, she can. She can save a favorite podcast for her walks or listen to an audiobook she loves. Pairing something enjoyable now with something that benefits us later can make a behavior easier to repeat because, unfortunately, our brains are rather fond of now.
You are not required to make every responsible activity as unpleasant as possible to prove that you’re a grown-up.
See Jane Blow It
Jane walks Wednesday. Maybe she walks again Friday. She begins to think she may finally be getting somewhere.
Then the following week happens.
She sleeps badly. Work is ridiculous. The dog throws up. Whatever the reason, Jane misses her walk.
This is where things can go spectacularly off the rails, because missing one ten-minute walk isn’t particularly significant. What Jane says to herself afterward can be.
See? I knew I wouldn’t stick with it. I never finish anything. Why can’t I be more disciplined?
And suddenly we’re no longer talking about a missed walk. We’re talking about who Jane believes she is.
See Jane miss one walk. See Jane prepare to question every life choice she has made since 2004.
We often assume being hard on ourselves will motivate us to do better next time. It turns out that may not work quite the way we think. Responding to failure with some self-compassion can actually help us recover and try again. That doesn’t mean letting ourselves off the hook or pretending our choices don’t matter. It means we don’t need to turn a failed behavior into evidence for the prosecution.
Missing Monday is one thing. Turning it into a three-week referendum on your character is another.
Jane can go back to the question she learned earlier: What happened?
Maybe she was exhausted. Maybe her plan was unrealistic that day. Maybe life genuinely interfered. Maybe she needs a different time, a smaller version of the behavior, a better cue, or simply another attempt tomorrow.
The failure gives her information. She can use it.
See Jane Get Curious
A few weeks pass. Jane’s walking habit is going reasonably well. It isn’t perfect, but she is doing it often enough that we can call it progress.
Remember that project Sunday Night Jane was going to work on?
Still hasn’t touched it.
Hmm.
We could build Jane another system. We could make the task smaller, put it on the calendar, remove distractions and create an elaborate reward system involving stickers.
Or we could ask a more uncomfortable question: Does Jane actually want to do it?
Not all motivation is created equal. We are more likely to keep doing things when they connect to something we genuinely value, when we have some choice in how we do them, and when we believe we are capable of succeeding. Pressure, guilt and a giant pile of shoulds can certainly get us moving sometimes, but they aren’t always particularly good at keeping us going.
Maybe Jane doesn’t actually want the promotion.
Maybe she doesn’t want to run the marathon.
Maybe she doesn’t need a morning routine involving journaling, meditation, exercise, lemon water, Bible study, skin care and apparently churning her own butter before sunrise.
This is where getting curious about our motivation becomes just as important as learning how to act without it. There are things worth doing even when we don’t feel like doing them. There are also things we need to stop trying to force because they were never ours to carry in the first place.
For those of us who approach life through faith, this is where discernment enters the conversation. What actually matters? What are you being called to care for, build, change or let go? Is this something you genuinely value, or have you been dragging around someone else’s definition of the life you should want?
Not every should deserves more discipline.
Back to the Couch
Remember where we started?
Jane was sitting on the couch Monday night telling herself she had no motivation. Maybe she’s sitting there again tonight.
Her life hasn’t magically become organized. She still gets tired. She still procrastinates. She occasionally makes plans that Future Jane wants absolutely nothing to do with. The difference is that she has stopped treating every failed plan as a personality test.
Now she knows to get curious. Was she exhausted? Was the behavior too difficult? Did she ever decide when she would do it? Was there too much friction? Could she make starting easier? Would making it more enjoyable help? Does she actually want the thing she keeps trying to make herself do?
Those are much more useful questions than What is wrong with me?
Sometimes changing the behavior is enough. Other times, when we start paying attention to what keeps getting in the way, we discover there is more happening underneath it. Maybe it’s anxiety, depression, burnout, a relationship, work that is draining the life out of us, or a loss of purpose we haven’t known how to name.
That’s the kind of work we do at Every Girl Living. We look at the whole picture because your emotional health, physical health, relationships, work, environment, faith and sense of purpose don’t operate in separate little boxes. Neither do you.
And that may be the biggest thing Jane has learned.
She doesn’t need to become the woman who leaps out of bed every morning bursting with motivation. She may still hit snooze, forget the water bottle, lose an evening to Netflix, or make a wildly ambitious Sunday-night plan that Tuesday Jane wants absolutely nothing to do with.
She just understands herself better now.
Maybe that’s what getting motivated looks like in real life. It isn’t becoming a woman who always feels like doing the right thing. It’s learning how to work with the woman you actually are.
See Jane run.
Or walk. Ten minutes counts.
Maybe You Need a Little Help Getting Moving
If you see yourself in Jane, you may not need another book, planner, podcast, or pep talk. You may need someone to help you figure out what keeps getting in the way and turn what matters to you into changes you can actually live with.
That’s where coaching can help. At Every Girl Living, coaching gives you a place to step back, look at the whole picture, clarify what you actually want, and create realistic next steps for moving forward. We can work on goals, habits, health and wellness, work, relationships, purpose, or simply that frustrating gap between I know what I want to do and why am I still not doing it?
And if what’s underneath your lack of motivation is more than a stuck goal, perhaps depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, or something else affecting your mental health, counseling may be the better place to begin. You don’t have to figure out which one you need before you reach out. We can help with that.
Ready to stop waiting for motivation and start figuring out what actually works for you? Schedule a free consultation with Every Girl Living.
Research & Further Reading
If you’d like to dig a little deeper into the research behind motivation, habits, and behavior change, these are some of the sources that informed this article.
Research
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). “Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions.” Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860. This is a strong source for our discussion of autonomous motivation, competence, relatedness, and why the quality of our motivation matters. DOIRead the Ryan & Deci article
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. This is the meta-analysis behind our discussion of deciding in advance when, where, and how we will act. It included 94 independent tests and found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment. DOIRead the Gollwitzer & Sheeran article
Cuijpers, P., et al. (2026). “Behavioral activation for depression: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis.” Clinical Psychology Review, 128, 102783. This review included 105 trials and 13,933 participants and supports our discussion of behavioral activation and the idea that action does not always have to wait for motivation or mood to improve. PubMedRead the behavioral activation review on PubMed
Milkman, K. L., et al. (2021). “Teaching temptation bundling to boost exercise: A field experiment.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. In a field experiment involving 6,792 participants, pairing exercise with audiobooks and encouraging temptation bundling increased exercise during the intervention. DOIRead the temptation bundling study
Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). “Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1133–1143. Across four experiments, self-compassion following mistakes or shortcomings was associated with greater motivation for self-improvement, which supports our discussion of what Jane does after she “blows it.” PubMedRead the self-compassion study on PubMed
Books Worth Reading
For a more accessible exploration of these ideas, I also recommend:
BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything — practical strategies for making behaviors smaller and easier to start. Tiny HabitsTiny Habits official book page
James Clear, Atomic Habits — an approachable guide to reducing friction, creating cues, building systems, and making habits easier to repeat. James ClearAtomic Habits official book page
Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct — a useful look at self-control, procrastination, temptation, setbacks, stress, and why what we want right now can conflict with what we want in the long run. Kelly McGonigalThe Willpower Instinct on Kelly McGonigal’s official site
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You — a more reflective look at self-sabotage and the patterns that can keep us stuck. I’d treat this as recommended reading rather than a research source. briannawiestBrianna Wiest’s official site
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