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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Spot on. This hit me a few weeks ago when I was considering a long workout class ln Peloton. I was hesitant to hit the start button because it was late, I was tired, etc. Then I realized that it was genuinely harder to hit play than to actually do the class.

Literally I've done thousands of workouts and have never regretted one, yet every time there's this negotiation to not do it. I am connecting that to your "reality is different 100% of the time" point.

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This book by David Burns [1] taught me that ACTION comes first, AND THEN motivation arrives. If you lay there and wait to be motivated, it will never happen. Specifically:

1. Action

2. Results

3. Motivation

4. Repeat!

Anti-pattern:

1. Motivation

2. Action

3. Results

4. Does not work

When I notice myself using self-talk like "ugh, I just don't feel like it" I thing of A-R-M and it helps.

1: https://amzn.to/3shnZlg

Some days you have to find motivation and some days motivation finds you.

Either way, it's because of your actions.

> This book by David Burns [1] taught me that ACTION comes first, AND THEN motivation arrives.

Existence precedes essence?

I'm assuming the above affiliate link is the book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr. David Burns

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...

I am assuing this is in the context of some kind of mental health issue? Because this reads and feels backwards to me. Maybe it is a recipe for people without motivation, and that is fine. But I, for one, am mostly driven by motivation. I dont do things just because they are written on a list, or because someone told me it is supposedly good. I do things because I am intrinsically motivated to do so, or not. Just performing an action in hope of positive affirmation to boost motivation feels like the algorithm to drive a robot, not a human.

It's not necessarily a "mental health issue", it's just fairly common procrastination.

Also, there's motivation and there's (self-) discipline. You get up in the morning or do things either because you feel like it, or because you have to. Of course it feels better if you feel like it (you're motivated), but if you're not motivated then discipline has to take over.

> I am assuing this is in the context of some kind of mental health issue?

Yes, if you are already 'self-actualized', you don't need to be thinking about behavior modification frameworks, your behaviors are already serving you.

Some people have circumstances and long-lived reactions and behaviors for those circumstances that make it very difficult to change course, even if they have a real desire to. This 'disconnectedness' between lived experience and personal goals and values can lead to a lot of anguish. In those cases, following a framework, even though it can feel 'weird', can lead to the positive sparks required for change.

> Anti-pattern:

> 1. Motivation

> 2. Action

> 3. Results

> 4. Does not work

Action and discipline (the habit of doing the same action) beat motivation everytime. And yet you will find people on HN that will fight to death that motivation is enough or that motivation is the moving force of discipline. Up to redefining words if needed. I think it's because of the warped guilt trip of the saying "you didn't do it/achieve it because you weren't motivated enough" and the "entrepreneuship" spirit of the audience who needs to believe that they can succeed no matter what and motivation is the main factor because it's something fuzzy enough they can say they had it or hadn't when they fail/succeed and ignore the hard unpleasant things like hard work, luck, skills, talent, etc.

I think a big part of the difficulty here is that "motivation" is a very broad term, and people often mix up different aspects of it (both intentionally and unintentionally). It pretty much covers the "full stack" of goal-oriented behavior: everything from the neurological factors that balance action vs. inaction generally to the most abstract meta-goals toward which actions are ultimately directed. When people say they "lack motivation", the experience they're describing might involve any mixture of deficiency in the biological foundations of attention and behavior, lack of identifiable goals, or lack of belief/understanding in the connections between actions and goals. An aphorism like "discipline beats motivation" can't possibly come close to engaging that full spectrum, so even if there's value in the underlying idea, there will probably always be people who feel that someone saying it is misunderstanding or ignoring their difficulties.

Furthermore, I think what people are sometimes confronting when they discuss motivation is personal belief in markedly different goals than society promotes. In such cases they're not really expressing a lack of motivation generally, but rather frustration with a disconnect between the goals they actually believe in and the goals that they've been told to pursue (typically with according extrinsic reward/punishment). Telling such people that they just need to develop discipline is probably about as useful as telling atheists that they just need to go to church.

It's sort of a meme but I experience this pretty frequently with running. I've been a distance runner for over 30 years now but when I have a long run and I wake up and I'm just not feeling it, I will stare at my running shoes with pure hatred for a while before finding the courage to lace up and move. It's always the right decision, I always feel incredible once I get going, but it's sometimes very hard to summon the motivation at the onset.

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