Don’t, but not starving to death is a good motivator! You can also remove barrier to entry to the thing you want to do. Remove one barrier at a time. Want to go on a trip? Save the money, then prep a suitcase, then prep the car, then you suddenly just go, no barriers left.
I put my alarm far enough away that I need to get up to turn it off. By then I’m already out of bed, which is otherwise the hardest part for me by far.
Not to fully disagree here, because sometimes we all need to do things we don’t want, but I don’t want to live a life where everyday requires unyielding discipline just to get up.
Maybe you’re talking more about habits, than forcing yourself to live through another awful day.
I don’t experience motivation hardly ever, but I sure have plenty of obligations to keep me moving. It’s a matter of forcing yourself to do the thing until you break apart and die as far as I’ve discerned.
My morning starts at 12am. God, it’s so awesome to work in the tech industry. I’m just wired like that and always have been. Back in school I was not compatible with the system of getting up early and often missed the first two hours.
I’m one of those weirdos who is a morning person. I wake up at 5:30am daily ready to GO. But I tap out at 3pm and go into goblin mode for the rest of the day. I guess my logic is that I want to get everything done for the day so I can just relax and enjoy my evening.
By having long term goals. If you’re working toward something bigger in life each day is just progress on that journey.
If you don’t have any long term goals start thinking about where you want to be in 5 or 10y and make some. Then you can think about how to get there and start making short and medium term goals to help you along the way.
Going to bed early enough that your actually awake before your alarm really makes mornings easy. I didn’t used to be a morning person but I kinda am now!
The next question does then become - how do I make myself go to bed at a sensible time?
This is good advice. I used to really push how late I’d stay up and then get jolted awake by my alarm. Felt like trash.
Now I go to bed like 9.5 hours before I have to get up (midnight -> 930) and usually wake up before the alarm. Feels great.
I set alarms for my bedtime to train myself into it. Like, alarm goes off at 11pm and I start winding down whatever I’m doing (video games, usually). Now I just do it naturally.
But as you said, how do you actually do the thing?
I’ve luckily never had problems with executive function, so I can’t really imagine clearly what it’s like to not be able to just make a decision and execute. One of my friends swears by medication, because they got diagnosed as an adult with ADHD.