But it’s more than that even. If you expect to only do what you’re good at, you miss many opportunities to play around. “Dance like no one’s looking”, right? I originally got this idea from an article in Keyboard magazine (”Dare to Suck”, yeah!). The writer passed up an opportunity to mess around onstage with some serious musicians–many of his idols–just because he couldn’t get his head around the idea that it was okay to suck, that the real reward was in hanging it out there and finding out what would happen. And there are MANY situations in which nothing will happen unless you’re willing to take the leap and risk almost certain failure. BUT THAT’S OKAY!

Writing a blog comment probably won’t do any justice to the problems your facing. I know, because I’ve been there. Where things like habits and productivity seem unimportant because you don’t have the motivation to do anything.

Where can you find the motivation?

There isn’t going to be an easy answer. My suggestion is to avoid looking at the entire meaning of life and focus on the meaning of tomorrow. It might take your whole life to be fully satisfied with an answer to the meaning of life, but finding a meaning in tomorrow is closer to reach.

How do you find a meaning in tomorrow?

There are many routes people have taken to get an answer. I’ll share the two ways that really helped me:

1) Setting goals.
2) Finding something I’m passionate about.

Setting goals you really care about is a good way to give your motivation a headstart. If you’re cynical and set goals you don’t think you’ll achieve, they won’t motivate you. But whenever you spend a lot of time contemplating what you truly desire, motivation usually follows.

Usually it isn’t that we don’t have dreams, but that our dreams have been smothered by what we view as “reasonable”. If you can let yourself set goals and think about what you want, you can recapture some of that motivation.

Setting goals isn’t an instant cure. There will still be times you lose motivation and slip into apathy. But they are helpful.

The second path I’ve used to recapture motivation is to find something I’m passionate about. This is a harder path because you can’t force it. Stumbling on your passions isn’t as direct a route as goal-setting.

The path isn’t easy, but it’s at least a path.

-Scott

I used to keep in-line with your articles, RSS and all, but I fell out of loop with the ideas of lifehacks when they became theoretical in routine, rather than practical.

I am 17-years-old myself, and I’m always drawn to your blog in particular: you carry a similar sense of self-esteem and wisdom one finds in much older lifehackers, with a highly refined sense of self.

Lucky for you, you seem as motivated as those who resort to lifehacking as a means to either overcoming or approaching the hump of having been lost in vice or reaching that age (mid-life evaluation, maybe? not to generalize upon any particular age), and so, I generally take your words as more than salt considering the many ‘messages’ I’ve read on the internet.

I have a question, but it’s a big one, and so I hope you won’t mind taking the time to respond. I’d rather receive a response from you, someone who I feel can genuinely relate to my circumstance, rather than sit from the pedestal of self-improvement and beckon to simply change for the sake of it.

How did you trigger the ability to take the first steps, the middle steps, and the last steps? I’m always bound by an overwhelming sense of apathy: what does it matter? Making the change has benefits, and yet on every coin, there are two faces. I find myself always questioning my true motivation (and if it is purely for the sake of others, or even more than halfway for others, or maybe only a fraction for others, I have a hard time doing it). Sometimes, I can’t even summon the motivation at all. I feel deadlocked, and unable to commit to even the most basic things. I find myself simply not doing things when I have incredible amounts of time. I feel the sense of boredom creeping when I waste time on the computer, or even sometimes with friends! Yet, I creep away from responsibility, always tired of ‘dealing with it’. I’m not so self-destructive that I am in denial about my status, nor am I powerless to do anything about it, I’m just lazy.

I feared that the problem linked to a chemical imbalance, however, that would imply I am more depressed than lazy. I genuinely enjoy life, especially when I have no worries whatsoever, just a blank page to start my day on.

I can’t fast-forward through days where the menial and worthless bog me down. I can’t help but feel I’ve spent the last few years of my life waiting to finally get started. The time is rapidly approaching and I’m doing poorly. Excellent test scores (not saying they judge anything important, but I am not without my own abilities) are shadowed upon by depressing GPAs and poor attendance.

From my limited and 17yo perspective, I feel like my progress of maturity has been stemmed by the failures of the ’system’ we all somehow live in and are often held back by. I read that statement and see the arrogance drip from the words, but I cannot shake the overwhelming sense of self, telling me I am entirely correct.

As much as I respect your words and agree with them, I cannot internalize them. Changing habits requires a sense of motivation, one that I have lost nearly entirely. Every time I am told to ‘zoom-in’ and appreciate the facets of day-to-day life, the joys of simple pleasures: kindness, progress, self-reform, I ‘zoom-out’ in a very Nietzsche way and I critique the reason, for what does anything really matter?

I don’t enjoy simply observing it all, I want to change and as a means of such change, change what is around me. But all of it points back to the question without any answer.

I suck, would you help me to stop?

It’s actually Scott (not Steve) but who’s counting?