How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do
72 comments
·September 17, 2025semiinfinitely
idle_zealot
> The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself
So, just start liking the things you don't like? Sure, ideally that's the solution you want, but it's not exactly actionable advice.
emil-lp
> further reading: youtube
johnfn
Really, deeply misguided? It's "deeply misguided" to listen to music while coding? It's deeply misguided to hang out with friends and also eat at a restaurant? It's "deeply misguided" sing while hiking? I find that hard to believe.
SoftTalker
The "treat yourself to a donut" suggestion got me. Sure, eat a donut, completely negating the caloric burn of the 30 minutes of aerobics you're motivating/rewarding yourself for.
watters
For plenty of already-in-shape people, the calories expended during the exercise are largely incidental, with the goal of exercise being to enhance or maintain some other property of their physical capacity.
stronglikedan
that not how it works. that's not how any of this works.
the aerobics build up muscle that will always be burning calories by merely existing. a donut here and there won't make a negligible difference, as long as the weekly aerobic activity level is maintained.
Nifty3929
I'll disagree slightly, though clearly you are correct that if your goal is to offset calories, then eating a donut negates the benefits of the exercise activity.
My disagreement is that I think exercise should not primarily be about calories - it should be about fitness. And almost all of the fitness gains from exercise persist even if you replace the calories with a donut.
Exercising for 30min and then relacing those spent calories with donuts is FAR better than not exercising and forgoing those extra calories.
IncreasePosts
You'll still have improved cardiovascular fitness even if you aren't losing weight.
Any ways, a lot of studies have shown your body has a variety of methods that attempt to counteract excess calories burned, like reduction in non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
cjbarber
My observation is it's an equation between:
1) reward/incentive/expected good feelings
2) effort/displeasure of doing the thing and the result
One way to increase #1 is to make it more socially involved. If you're working on a project solitarily, start going to events and talking about it with people, or write about it online. Humans are massively socially motivated.
For #2, one way to address this is with emotional processing. Often something is unpleasant because it reminds of something we didn't like from the past. So really digesting those emotions can allow the expected displeasure to fade because we kind of integrate it into our brains/bodies. But the key for this is that it has to be emotional processing, not intellectual processing.
BolexNOLA
Don’t forget 3) consequences for not doing it
trjordan
Everybody is different, but the biggest reason I struggle with this right now is the pace of modern life.
Doing hard things is hard, and that means I won't be thinking about the other stuff I have to do. I'm more apt to miss a text from my family when I'm running or writing a document than when I'm vibe coding, because the effort is all-encompassing. Subconsciously, that's stressful, so I steer away from it.
Habits help here, because with enough repetition, I learn that it's OK to disappear for an hour to do the thing. But the real issue is getting the meta-organization of my life right enough that I'm not scared to shut down my ambient executive function for that hour. This shows up as both "I'm too busy to do the hard thing" and "I'm too tired to do the hard thing."
Slowing down isn't the answer, but it's been pretty transformative to notice that that's what I'm worried about.
jraph
Do something quick and crappy. And let your perfectionism fix it. And... here you are gotten started!
It can be a single word or a instruction that crashes your program at the location that needs to be worked on.
Leave a syntax error for getting started quick tomorrow.
Write down what needs to be done before it leaves your head (but don't make it perfectly structured and clean, a few words on a paper on your desk will do).
edit: For instance, you'd possibly want to fix the missing "n" in this comment. Make this feeling a tool against your procrastination.
edit2: ah, and get the hell out of HN, too.
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coffeecoders
I find it interesting how a lot of this advice overlaps with the same tricks we use in software engineering to tackle big problems. Breaking things into smaller chunks or even gamifying with streaks is basically the human version of agile sprints.
Sleep, diet, and stress are like "system dependencies".
piker
I personally draw inspiration from John Carmack. I've understood his approach to be basically just stare at your problem and ignore everything else until you make a little bit of progress. The answer is there.
emil-lp
This is the Procrastination version of Feynman's problem solving technique.
Write down the problem. Think really hard. Write down the solution.
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terabytest
Sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. My main issue is to even get myself to sit and stare at the work to be done. It has been really frustrating seeing the lengths I go to, consciously or unconsciously, to procrastinate.
marginalia_nu
I think it's mostly about accepting that you are the one in control. The problem of "getting yourself to do something" is poorly formulated, as though some other person was in charge of your actions that you have to convince to do what you want.
This confused conviction is the real problem. There is no other you to convince. The same you that you are bargaining with to do the thing is the same you that's doing the bargaining. You can at any moment just do it.
koakuma-chan
I used to work a non tech office job, one day it became so unbearable, I was literally falling asleep and was no longer able to bring myself to do the job at all, because of how much mental effort was required for even the smallest things. I stood up and quit.
SoftTalker
I once had a job where I would sit in my car in the parking lot for 30 minutes every morning just mustering the will to walk into the office.
ljlolel
What was the job?
RangerScience
What’d you do after that?
geeB
That is by far the best approach… if you can do it. If your mind already works that way, you might not appreciate how much of a superpower you have.
bobcorponoi
That's interesting, I'll have to look into that and give it a try. Seems like a good way to build back up your attention span as well.
siliconc0w
For more intellectual endeavors I find if I'm avoiding working on something it can be because I'm being lazy or just don't like the category of work but often it is a good sign it's not quite the right activity for the moment. It may not be well defined enough, or the highest priority, or doubting it is likely to yield the outcome I want. Time of day matters too, in the morning I feel like doing different things than in the afternoon. I can push through and "just do it" if I have to but often it's worth listening to this feeling and picking a task I am motivated to do instead.
task331
After several years of trying to come up with the perfect way to keep motivation up, I have found there is no such thing.
The only thing that matters for me nowadays is this: before I start the task, I admit to myself that it is going to be hard, but I am doing it anyways, so why do it like its a drag? It's pointless and it's a waste of energy.
task331
Also, I have found that if I don't open myself up to the hard task at hand before I start, a lot of things can happen that deviates myself from doing the task in its optimal form. For example, I can come up with excuses for not doing the task right now, or I can invent other work that is 'more important', or find something to blame while I do the task so I can cope with its difficulty, etc.
There is a myriad of things that can be invented to avoid or cope with the pain, but if I am going through this anyway, there is no reason whatsoever to make it more painful that it will already be.
hbarka
I understand that these heuristics are completely different for people with ADHD.
Also the role of dopamine cycles has a big effect on proactiveness.
guhcampos
Let's all be honest here.
I use Vyvanse.
mallowdram
"How words are post-hoc arbitrary retrofits to actual neural thoughts"
A self-help guide about language wholly distinct from thought.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
I have participated in a company-wide meeting not that long ago and as a corporate veteran of sorts, I have never heard such a high amount of new corporate friendly neologisms in such a short amount of time. Corporate bingo would have been over 3 minutes flat. There is a part of me that is amused, because people saying those words clearly did not believe them ( delivery was very flat ), but it does make me question the future of our language.
My initial pet theory was that is going to be more uniform as a result, but now... I am not so certain.
> The only way I can convince myself to do it is by finding a suitably engaging show I can distract myself with on my phone while I huff and puff.
> Combine the task with something you enjoy. You know what makes cleaning out the garage a lot better? Some good tunes.
This motivational advice is deeply misguided. These are very clear examples of "dopamine stacking". The idea is that by combining a stimulating activity (eg watching show/music) with a motivation-requiring activity (eg working out/cleaning) you can get an initial boost in motivation to accomplish the hard task. It works (initially) because the stimulating task (show/music) is giving you a dopamine increase which feels like motivation to complete the hard task. The problem is that if you repeat this behavior with any consistency, your dopamine system quickly adjusts the high activity-combo level of dopamine as a new baseline. Soon not even the dopamine you get from the combination is sufficient to motivate you to accomplish the task. At this point people often seek another short lived dopamine-increasing stimulus to combine into the mix.
You can see this pattern in people who exercise only with some combination of pre-workout, caffeine, music, phone scrolling.
The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself.
further reading: 1. https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz