What to Do if You’re Tired Without Having Actually Done Anything

This is likely not what you expected to hear, but the reason you feel tired is that you haven’t done anything.

Okay, hear me out.

You haven’t done anything that is in line with a vision of an idealistic future you want for yourself. An activity that moves you one step closer to that dream that sets your soul on fire — the goal you would unabashedly pursue if you were guaranteed to succeed at anything in life!

But it’s hard to tackle any goal if you’ve depleted your energy reserves as a result of not having managed your body well. So before diving into the psychological reasons behind this phenomena, let’s address one critical thing first.

Tend to the Body

We all know what taking good care of our physical selves looks like: eating healthy, nutrient-rich foods, exercising daily, getting sufficient sleep. You don’t need me to tell you that. But what happens is we often push aside thoughts of what we know we ought to be doing because we gravitate towards what feels good in the moment. Instead, what we have to do is start asking ourselves how a certain decision is going to make us feel later on. If we want to keep our energy tanks full so that we have the resources necessary to execute against our dreams, we’ve first got to be cognizant of the way we’re treating our bodies.

That being said, sometimes when we’re feeling listless, it’s not because we haven’t had enough sleep or because we drank too much the night before. It’s that other feeling we all know so well — that exhaustion we feel when we have no reason to. And, in that case, I’d be willing to bet that even though it feels a helluva lot like fatigue in your body, what you’re experiencing is actually just a lack of motivation.

Touch the Rim of the Future

One of my favorite motivational speakers and high-performance coaches, Brendan Burchard, has this saying:

“If the mind doesn’t touch the rim of the future every day, motivation will wane.”

If you feel tired for no apparent reason, what’s happened is you’ve lost touch with a future in which you have the thing you most want.

Okay, but who can blame you? I mean, take a look at the world right now. With all that’s going on, it’s enough to make anybody want to just lie in bed all day, glutting yourself with Netflix tv shows until the wee hours of the morning when, finally, the chirping of birds induces you to sleep. And here’s the thing — it’s an excuse that is totally valid. I know I’ve had my fair share of lazy days over the past eight months when I felt too weighed down by the craziness of current events to do much of anything.

Sometimes, when we feel tired without having done anything, what we’re actually experiencing is a reaction to stress and overwhelm. And this past year has been nothing if not stressful. We’re justified in having had sad, lazy days. We’re justified in not having performed at our best 100% of the time.

But I believe we have an innate, internal compass of sorts, that knows when we’re achieving less than we’re capable of. Isn’t that why we subconsciously feel so discontented with ourselves when we waste time? When we don’t do something we had said we’d do?

Something deep inside of us knows when we let ourselves down. We lose self-integrity. And the real sinister thing about it is, the longer we stay in that vacuum of inactivity, the easier it gets to stay there. It seems like the more we remain idle, the more activation energy it takes to get up and actually commit to a task.

This is the law of inertia:

“It is the natural tendency of objects to resist changes in their state of motion.”

It’s just the way our lizard brains work. The amygdala, which is responsible for the fight or flight response, is designed to keep you from the things that are fearful, risky or difficult. It craves comfort and familiarity. The problem is that comfort rarely ever brings lasting happiness and fulfillment.

The more we remain in idleness, the more we feel unmotivated, languid and, yes, tired without having done a single thing. Now on top of the weight of all that may already be wrong with our external circumstances, we’re also carrying the burden of our own self-reproach.

So let’s not waste our mental energy reprimanding ourselves for having underperformed. Instead, use that discontent to fuel your desire for change. Cultivate the self-awareness necessary to evaluate yourself and decide to act differently today.

Don’t Mind How You Feel in the Moment

The solution is simple:

Push yourself to do the hard shit.

Notice I said it was simple — not easy. No doubt, it’s going to be unpleasant. It’s going to go against the comfort that the lizard brain craves. It demands discipline. High performance requires not minding how you feel.

But it’s easy to be disciplined when you’re afflicted with a burning love of something and when you believe that your efforts are going to be rewarded.

So work on reconnecting with the image of a bright future. Fan the flames of your innermost desires. People undervalue the power of visualization — not in a New Age “manifest it just by thinking about it” sense but in a way that allows you to connect with what is most important to you. In a way that allows you to touch the rim of the future and put yourself in a state where the realization of your goals can be imagined.

Because once you’re in that state of excitement about all the possibilities that your ideal future holds for you, it becomes infinitely easier to

TAKE ACTION!

A good hack to trick your brain into being productive is to say to yourself that you’re going to spend just 5 minutes working on a task that is of value to you. Something that takes the least amount of effort possible. Often times, those five minutes build enough momentum to carry you through for much longer, if not all the way to its completion. The important thing is to work on something you’re passionate about because if you enter a flow state, what happens is the activity actually generates energy instead of taking it from you.

Our lives are ultimately determined by the habits we develop; the things we do day in and day out. Destiny is nothing more than the result of our disciplined actions.

So when you feel sluggish, unmotivated, or just lazy, remember —

Don’t sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now.

Because it’s the things we do when we feel the least like doing them that count the most.

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