I’ve found that motivation and routine happen when you ask yourself the right questions instead of the wrong ones.
These are all the wrong questions I try to ask myself, each a little opportunity to find some bullshit excuse to sit in my home office and do nothing. Instead I respond to the alarm on my phone that it’s 11:50. It reminds me to slip on shoes, grab my bag, and head to the back door. I’ve had to teach myself to push away all those little questions that are really just the procrastination talking. I asked myself all the right questions last night so it would be easier to ignore all the wrong ones this morning.
It’s so easy to do nothing, never to get started. By the time I’m 100 meters into my swim I’m puzzled how doing nothing could ever have been an option. It’s the act of getting started that matters for me. Just the tiniest bit of momentum, focusing on the immediate next thing, and pushing away all the little questions is what works.
Now more than ever seems like a good time to go on a news diet. The local news in Chicago is bad enough, but the national news is just an unending torrent of depressing and dumb right now. It seems worthwhile to ignore articles, no matter how well written, that are present to not to inform, but to enrage. If no decision or final action has occurred about the federal government, I’m pretty sure I can ignore it. If no vote has occurred, or final rule published, I think I can safely ignore it. The rest is just bluster and posturing that will make me upset.