Ask HN: How do you get out of a rut?

Think about yourself. While crude, I think Maslov’s pyramid has some truth to it. Have you sufficiently addressed the concerns in the layers below cognitive? I firmly believe that physical and mental health are more important than career/financial aspirations. It’s a difficult balance which we all have trouble navigating. Small steps towards the right balance will stack up over time.

Try to shift some of your focus to things you can make and get small achievements in. For example, getting more fit and working out. Your initial goal isn't going to be about being better than a friend or "the average" or even what you might remember from when you were younger. Spend a couple of days benchmarking yourself, even if you feel like really lethargic, imagine the bare minimum and make a little less than that your expectations. When I was going through a rough time, going outside and going to a gym was an achievement. Even if all I did was go there, go in the gym and pretend to do some stretches and then leave again, that was still more than I did the day before. Do that for a week and you might start to think, since you're going to the gym and spending time there, might as well do some activities. This isn't about getting fit, until you want to make that step, it's about moving.

I'll give you a breakdown of my initial fitness ladder, each step a few days or a week. Go to the gym for 10 minutes and stare at the tv and leave. Go to the gym for 20 minutes, find a tv I like and do some stretches near it, and then leave. Go to the gym and chill on the elliptical for 15 and leave. Go to the gym and try running and get tired after 5 minutes so I do another 5 minutes on an elliptical and leave. Go at a less busy time so I can try out different machine and see where I stand with each weight for 20 minutes. Find that there's a basketball court and borrow a ball from the front desk and shoot a few hoops for 15. Workout for 10 minutes and then stretch for 20.

I know it sounds weird that I am recommending the gym when you said you feel lethargic, but I promise any kind of workout is energizing. In fact just being near people that I can see are pushing themselves encourage me to try a bit harder too, even on days I didn't feel like it.

It's a good environment, and I know it might seem a little intimidating, but I promise no matter what day you go, you're not going to be the only person going for the first time. If nature and outdoors is your thing, that's cool, but for me the social aspect of it is important. I rarely talked to anyone other than the front desk person. It didn't matter, it was just about being around people and not alone. People that judge you for your performance at a gym are going to the gym for the wrong reason. All that matters is you do a little better on the long term average. If you feel weird or concerned about anything, ask the staff. Most places they are pretty bored and they'll want to help you, especially if you're new. They don't want to see you get hurt and that's the perspective you should keep.

Everyone starts somewhere

And over time I've worked up to being able to do an hour in the gym without thinking about it and I fell back in love with biking which I used to do as a kid. I love badminton and it was fun finding people to play with. I got into archery as well. I loved group fitness activities, not zumba, but Yoga was critical to my recovery. It wasn't that Yoga class is anything special, it was that teachers of yoga always approach it from a place of healing or restorative vibes. If the teacher is pretentious or makes you feel bad about not being able to do something, they're a bad teacher and you shouldn't continue their class.

If you want to feel confident about your first day, if you want to prepare, there's tons of yoga instructional videos on youtube for free. If you'd rather do things alone, that's fine too. I would just strongly recommend you reconsider and try it out in a group setting.

The reason why I focused on fitness is because it's something I genuinely didn't care about growing up. That meant I had no expectations for myself. Even the smallest achievements were meaningful and that feeling helped me pull myself out of that rut.

I would explore if there's some underlying mental or physical health concern if the lethargy is seriously becoming a detriment to your everyday function. Generally, for students, there's a mental healthcare provider you can access for free. It doesn't have to be therapy or even an ongoing thing, it could just be a visit to sit and talk to someone for an hour and have them help you figure out what's going on. Taking care of yourself means getting yourself checked out by a professional. They get paid to help you out. If you are feeling sick and it's not really getting better, you go to a doctor and they tell you if it'll go away on its own or if there's something more to be worried about. The same is true for mental health, but not everyone see it without stigma. It's your body and life, you don't need to care about what other people will think about it.

If you're in a place where access to professional is limited, there's a youtube channel I recommend Dr K. He's a Psychiatrist who did his residency at Harvard. He talks to online to popular streamers and gamers and his open discussions helped some of my friends change their perspective on what addressing mental health concerns means.

3 Motivation Styles determined by Personality by Dr. K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRWX21lW_bU is a good video I would recommend for anyone in your position.

Helping myself physically helped me mentally. And that's good because I didn't have to think much to help myself physically, because of where I was starting, just moving at all was a good accomplishment.

I hope that helps, I know everyone says exercise but, to me, it lacks meaningfulness when it's not explained. Good luck.

‘Sitting at your desk with no motivation to do anything’. Let’s frame this from a couple of different angles.

- You have time/opportunity to do whatever you choose to improve your life, and nothing feels worth trying, the time just runs out repeatedly.

- Given a set of unstated constraints on your self-permitted behavior and potential pursuits, when you consider your options, nothing excites you, no pursuit resonates with emotional anticipation.

If that captures it, what’s helped me in my life is to use an analogy of mathematical optimization:

1. the options you permit yourself are too narrow. Try things that other people seem to enjoy that you are unfamiliar with. ie expand your horizon by expanding the boundary of the domain. Give yourself more options.

2. you’re overconfident that different activities will provide negative/neutral benefit, assuming there is something that you’ll enjoy. This is a type of learned helplessness, similar to gradient ascent/descent in a flat zone. One strategy is to take random jumps into the unknown. ie commit more to what you try, try going all in where you’d otherwise be more cautious.

3. If you’re overstimulated on caffeine or red bull, or partially emotionally anaesthetized (through behavior like intellectualization or emotional immaturity) you may be insensitive to what is truly emotionally rewarding. I think this is like a faulty objective function. Try meditation, or removing stimulants, or read about maladaptive emotional coping mechanisms, or try a psychotherapist.

One thing worth mention is you should block all the easy options (social media, video, games) at morning/afternoon. For me once I do those easy things at morning they seem to stuck at working memory for long to hurt my whole day concentration. I allow those easy options at dinner time as a small reward and block them again at 21:00 to 23:30.

FWIW, you're already motivated - your post is evidence enough of that. Keep asking yourself why you feel like you want to do something and see where that leads.

Perhaps that exercise reveals some deep set intention. Congratulations, that is yours to nurture and grow. Put a definition of a milestone that will move you towards satisfying that intention. Write it down and say it out loud. Repeat that daily, indefinitely. Identify the difference in state between where you are today and your desired outcome. Break the journey down into discrete action steps, then do a step forward. As you go forward, take inventory of all of the actions you've taken so far and admire your growing wealth of progress. Don't interrogate your intention too often or judge it too harshly, if it came from a good place, it will lead you somewhere good.

Perhaps the exercise revealed nothing at all. There is nothing that you want, nothing pulling you any particular direction. Congratulations, you've arrived! You're free from striving and have achieved the pinnacle of human longing. Enjoy the level of contentment, leisure, and freedom that has been the aim of so many, for so long, and enjoy it well.

“Nothing to do is itself a great doing.” ― Ehsan Sehgal

“I sat in my backyard all afternoon and did nothing. Whenever I do nothing I feel I've accomplished a lot.” ― Marty Rubin

Perhaps you have nothing you want, but nothing doesn't satisfy you. Go help somebody who needs it. There is plenty to do, and helping people does quite a lot of good for you. Even if you got nothing out of it, at least someone did.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Hibernation and seasonality is perfectly mammalian. Spring is coming.