There is something comforting, even too easy, about believing that motivation is the missing ingredient.
If you could just get it back, the drive, the energy, the sense of urgency, then the work would resume on its own. Words would come. Momentum would return. Things would feel lighter. This belief persists because motivation is an easy explanation. It is visible. It is familiar. And when it is absent, it gives us something concrete to blame.
But like many simple explanations, it does not hold up particularly well under scrutiny.
I realized this one day at our home gym, half-resting between sets, watching a TED talk titled “How to Succeed Without Confidence, Motivation, or Healing.” The premise alone felt slightly irritating. But the more I listened, the clearer something became. I was not stuck because I lacked motivation. I was stuck because I was waiting for it.
Motivation is compelling. And unreliable.
We tend to treat motivation as the engine of action. No motivation, no movement. The logic feels obvious. But research on human behavior tells a quieter story. Sustainable action tends to emerge not from emotional readiness, but from conditions that make action easier to sustain. Self-Determination Theory describes these conditions as autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
When those are present, motivation often follows. When they are absent, motivation fades, regardless of how much someone wants to care. Looking at my own writing through that lens, the pattern was hard to miss.
Writing no longer felt chosen. It felt expected. It no longer felt competent. It felt rusty and self-conscious. And it no longer felt connected to anything or anyone in particular. The loss of motivation was not the problem. It was a symptom.
The quiet flaw in waiting to feel ready
There is a common assumption that motivation precedes action. In practice, the relationship often runs in the opposite direction. Behavioral research has long shown that action can precede, and even create, motivation. This is the basis of behavioral activation. People begin doing small, structured actions first, and emotional engagement follows later, if at all.
In other words, “I don’t feel like it” is not a reliable signal. It is just a state. AndI had been treating it as a verdict!
Once I stopped doing that, the question shifted from whether I felt motivated to something far more practical. What is the smallest version of this work I can do without needing motivation at all? That question turned out to be far more useful.
What was actually missing
The issue was never discipline. It was not creativity either. What was missing were the conditions that make sustained effort possible.
Autonomy had eroded. Writing had quietly turned into an obligation rather than a choice. Competence had become fragile. Time away made every sentence feel like evidence of decline. And relatedness had disappeared. The work existed in isolation, untethered from any real exchange.
None of this is dramatic. It is structural. When those conditions weaken, motivation does not disappear out of laziness. It disappears because it has nothing to attach to.
What changed once I stopped waiting for motivation
The solution was not to try harder. It was to lower the activation energy. I stopped aiming for meaningful output and focused on consistency instead. A paragraph. A few sentences. This time just opening the document and making one small adjustment.
I attached the writing to something concrete rather than to emotion. After coffee. Before anything else. No negotiation. No self-analysis.
Some days, momentum appeared halfway through. Some days it did not. But the work still happened, and over few days that reliability rebuilt something more durable than motivation.
Trust. Trust that I could show up even when it felt flat. Trust that the feeling would change if I stayed long enough. Trust that progress did not require inspiration.
The part that is easy to miss
What that talk surfaced for me was not a productivity trick. It was a reframing.
- Motivation is not a prerequisite.
- Confidence is not a requirement.
- Feeling ready is not a signal to begin.
They are, at best, side effects. The real work happens when the system around the work is stable enough to function without them.
The unsatisfying but useful conclusion
Motivation is helpful. It makes things easier. It makes work feel lighter. But it is not the engine. The engine is structure. It’s consistency. And the engine is reducing friction until action becomes ordinary.
I am still not writing because I feel inspired. I am writing because I no longer need to feel inspired to start. And that, lucky me, turns out to be a far more reliable place to work from.
