Summary

The article discusses the concept of self-motivation and the importance of recognizing and utilizing personal moments of inspiration rather than waiting for external cues to start tasks.

Abstract

The author likens the anticipation of motivation to a runner waiting for a starting gun that never fires, emphasizing that we often waste energy waiting for a signal to begin. Instead, we should recognize that we are alone on the track and it's up to us to initiate action. The article suggests viewing motivational energy as a slowly filling cup, which, once full, can tip over and spur us into action. It highlights the importance of being aware of what fills our individual cups, whether it's dreams, exercise, or other activities, and not letting these moments of full potential slip away. The author argues that by understanding and adapting to what motivates us, we can avoid waiting indefinitely for motivation and become more flexible and productive individuals.

Opinions

The author believes that waiting for motivation can lead to wasted energy and missed opportunities.
It is suggested that individuals have more control over their motivation than they realize and should take initiative without external signals.
The article posits that everyone has a unique "cup" that represents their motivational energy, which can be filled by various personal experiences or activities.
The author expresses a personal anecdote about a dream that could have been a creative inspiration but was lost due to hesitation, illustrating the importance of acting promptly when motivation strikes.
The author opines that motivation should be seen as exciting, akin to packing for a vacation, rather than dreading it as one would an oncoming storm.
The article encourages readers to experiment with different methods to find what effectively motivates them, promoting a flexible and self-aware approach to personal productivity.
The author concludes that by not waiting for the perfect moment and instead understanding and leveraging personal motivators, one can avoid wasting life in a perpetual state of preparation.

You’re Wasting Your Life in the Moment Before Motivation

In the moments before motivation strikes, it can feel a lot like crouching at a starting block, waiting for the sound of gunfire to signal the sprint.

More often than not, as I’m sure many of us can attest to, it can sometimes feel as if whoever’s holding the pistol fell asleep.

We sit there, eyes focused, muscles tensed, listening for that fateful blast that will send us careening down the track…and it just never comes. Our anxiety starts to build as we start to think something must be wrong.

We usually hear it by now, right? No one else is running, so they must be waiting too, you think.

It never dawns on us that there is no gun. There are no other racers. We forget that we’re the only ones on the track and we’ve just been waiting for someone else to notice that we’re out here and to walk over to tell us when to start. We dread the realization that we’re alone and it’s up to us to fire the synapse in our mind to get us to blast off the block and make for the finish line on our own terms.

We get so caught up in waiting for a signal that we use up half of our energy in anticipation of it.

If we can see these moments before we feel motivated as a period to reflect on the control we truly have over our time, we’re better able to play with and rearrange the preconceived notions about ourselves that we’ve constructed about how we naturally operate.

Don’t wait when your cup is full

I try to see my own motivational energy as a slowing filling cup. Kind of like those big barrels of water they have at water parks. They gradually fill up with water, then eventually once it’s full, the weight of it forces it to tip over onto all the screaming children anxiously waiting for the waterfall.

Sometimes my cup takes forever to fill, other times it’s teeming within minutes. It all depends on what sort of state of mind I wake up in.

This morning for instance, just before waking up, I was having the most clear and interesting dream. The kind that, upon waking, I knew I needed to write down and record what I could before it all disappeared. This shit could have been movie worthy, it had a plot and theme and even a famous actor in it. It basically could have written itself…if only I could have remembered it all.

Instead, I took just a few minutes too long trying to sort out exactly how it all went before I started writing anything, and before I knew it, the nearly solid chunks of story I had in my hands had turned into scattered fragments. A crisp first draft melted into wet tissue paper before my eyes.

I spent the next hour or so trying to work up the courage to start free-writing in the usual way I do in the morning, and even that turned into a slog. My head just wasn’t in the right place. It felt like I had lost something special and I should spend at least some time grieving its loss instead of just shaking it off and resuming business as usual.

My state of mind and motivational energy cup was full to the brim at that moment of waking up. Overflowing with those sweet dream juices. But, as that elusive elixir tends to do, it poured out into the ether and I was left scraping the bottom of the barrel once again.

I got up and walked around and gave the cup some time to fill again before sitting back down to do what I could with what I had.

We need to be aware of what it is in our lives that fills our own cups. Maybe if you’re more of an abstract thinker like myself, dreams can be one of your most useful muses. They work for me to get my engines warmed up…usually…(sigh).

Other people need exercise. They get those real-world juices flowing before they decide it’s time to start anything.

Before I decided to sit my ass back down and start this article, I was about to do just that. I figured going for a short run could maybe be a shortcut to filling my cup back up. Maybe not with that same abstract concoction I woke up with, but at least with a little blood to the brain and heat to the veins.

It can be hard not to think of the motivation you need to follow through on the obligations you’ve made to yourself like preparing for a nearby storm cloud. You do everything you need to do to weather the oncoming torrent of responsibility, so you spend it anxious and almost fearful of what’s coming. It’s not so often we instead see the building of motivation like packing for a vacation, exciting with a side of that good kind of nervous.

In the moments before motivation strikes us, we need to find a balance between waiting for a moment that feels right and also not thinking about it at all.

No problem, right?

There isn’t going to be a perfect formula for how everyone should start their day or begin their work, but if you can understand what works for you and not resist the changes that come with working out different or improved ways of operating on a daily basis, you’ll be on the right track to becoming a more flexible and well-rounded individual in life as well as your art.

Otherwise, you’ll be stuck wasting your life with an aching back as you’re crouched at the starting line forever, waiting to hear a gunshot that’s never going to come.

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