How to Force Your Brain To Be Motivated (when you don’t feel like it)

Motivation is fickle
Anything that depends on motivation will also be fickle
How can we avoid motivation-dependent productivity?
Break the automatic links between feelings and thoughts or thoughts and actions

flowchart LR  
F("🫀Feelings") -- ❌ --> T("🧠Thoughts") -- ❌ --> A("🏃Actions")

The DFUZ (“defuse”) Method

Distinguish between feelings, thoughts, and actions
- Feeling demotivated does not require acting demotivated
Fake the emotion you’d like to have by acting like someone who displays that emotion
Uptime
- gradually increase the amount of time we can act differently than how we feel
Zone
- Create a zone of focus
- Note distractions as they occur
- Systematically eliminate distractions from the zone