Ask HN: How to do that you need to do but not motivated at all?

Adding to the pile - I personally feel its too easy to fall into the comfort of telling ourselves that other people are giving bad advice!

Caution: Your Mileage May Vary.

Are you Procrastinating on tasks? Mindfulness, full stop. If I'm in a youtube/wiki/gaming rabbit hole (oooone more short vid, ooone more click, ooone more quest) There are natural breaks between these activities. The more you practice being aware of these things the easier it becomes to notice the break. I literally say to myself, "Okay time to do the dishes" and I put my computer to sleep, get up, and head in the direction. Once you get started on the task its quite easy to finish it.

Can't put your phone down when you're at home chillin, even if you're watching a movie? Literally put it somewhere inconveniently out of reach. I leave my phone on my nightstand in my bedroom. Now I literally can't look at it if I should be working on my comic or something. Everything my phone can do that is actually important I can hear it from the other room. You might scoff at this advice but imagine if an alcoholic scoffed at you for telling them "Get rid of the alcohol in your house". Not a "cure" but it'll go a long way in helping.

When I share with my good friend that I'm trying to wake up earlier he told me, "You're getting the same amount of day regardless because waking up earlier doesn't mean you sleep less". I think about that a lot when I reflect on what I choose to spend my time doing when I'm up at 2 am.

Habits > Motivation. Do things in small chunks. Literally remind myself "A step a day will get me to my destination"

I refuse to beat myself up for starting and then only being able to go halfway. I mentioned a comic earlier. I prefer to complete a page in a workday. But if I don't, that's fine? Like I still worked on it and that's better than not working on it at all!

I like carving out a schedule - I used to be really wound up - In the Art community there's this idea that you have to "Draw everyday (or else!)". I think that's bogus. The people I know who take this to the extreme neglect other areas of their life. As an outsider looking in - that sounds horrible.

Too Depressed to get out of bed? Get out of bed anyway? Like, the way I see it, I'm going to be depressed in bed, I might as well be depressed doing the dishes. If anything I'm getting a two-fer. The dishes get done (A task I'm procrastinating on because its 'unpleasant', and I already feel unpleasant so win win)

Take breaks.

It takes more than a week to really build a habit - Since you're already asking about how to solve the problem you're doing the first step!

Good luck!

(PS: Be careful with the 'trap' of productivity. I find that a lot of my peers ask themselves, "What is the point of doing 'X' if it isn't how I make a living?". I find this to be a terribly bleak outlook on life. I know money is important but money is just a tool for having our needs met. It puts food on the table and a roof over your head but it isn't the end-all-be-all of human endeavors. Same with attention. Like, as an example, Make cool Art because Art is cool and worth making not because you're going to get X number of followers or whatever. Everything else is gravy imo.)

Atomic habits with discipline.... you wanted or not

Thre flip side of all the "habit" talk is that habits are as much what keeps you from doing those things by creating distractions -- opportunities for procrastination. For instance, if I sit at a workstation and the first thing I do is reflexively open a browser and type `news+Enter` to get to this orange site, that's what I'll do instead of whatever I went to the computer for.

Blocking habits that induce procrastination by rearranging your life or home can do a lot to break that cycle long enough to re-orient your life toward one where you do the things you need to do because "eh, I've got nothing better to do".

Is your physical health ok? Is your mental health ok? Is there something you are telling yourself that is not true?

Powder milk Biscuits: Whole wheat that gives shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.