TLDR:
- To rekindle the willpower, it all redirects back to the principles of intrinsic motivation of ticking certain checkboxes daily without failure.
- Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen if I miss a day?”
- Think about the parallels of your level of dedication and remaining steadfast no matter what
- Depending on the journey you’re currently embarking on, you’ve most likely accepted that 80-90% of what it is you’ll do will be crap, so what’s wrong if today’s crap will be even crappier?
- What you will find from this exercise is that when you look back under a better psychological state, your current zeitgeist will be further developed by breaking down what it looked like on the day you didn’t want to do anything at all, helping you to constitute what not to do at all.
- It’s like a golden opportunity cost in the form of a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, for you’ll have the epiphany that the turning point of your growth curve to grow exponentially were trials such as these.
What to do when the fuel is low for the day
When you’ve embarked on a 100-day journey or a long-term commitment towards working on something for several months every day, as one of the most basic economic graphs in the business cycle shows us, there will be days when you’re at a trough for the day: your fuel is low.
You woke up on the wrong side of the bed as a result of it taking longer than usual to fall asleep, leading to the spillover effect resulting from the classic cause-and-effect relationship: you wake up groggy, find that you’re easily irritable and very tired, ultimately leading to lack of willpower to get any productive work done.
You try to muster every ounce of brain power you have left in the tank to move yourself to sit at your desk, but nada.
So how can you rekindle it?
It’s simple: it all redirects back to the principles of intrinsic motivation of ticking certain checkboxes daily without failure.
“What’s the worst that could happen if I miss a day?”
Depending on your dedication, a sense of guilt will dawn on you for missing a day. It will feel like you’re back to square one, for once you relapse below the threshold, it becomes easier to skip a day and push it for the next day, compounding into a backlog you’ll be playing catch up with.
By remaining steadfast, you’ll find the power is born from your intrinsic motivation, enabling you to transcend to the next level, as though you could now look down upon other people for not being as dedicated as you are.
One of the most potent intrinsic motivations would probably be the willingness to get your hands dirty no matter what, with waking up like you had a terrible hangover coming well under that umbrella; an excellent opportunity really. After all, if you’re not willing to let a self-fulfilling prophecy bear fruit that day in that you know you’ll do very crap today anyways, how will you see the better days otherwise?
Assuming you’ve accepted that 80-90% of what you do in a 100-day challenge or experimentation period for the sake of your growth curve will be crappy, then frame your mindset in the mold of “what’s wrong if today’s crap will be even crappier?”
What you will find is that when you’re in a better psychological state and are looking back at this after your growth curve has gone up, your current zeitgeist will be further developed by breaking down what it looked like on that day, assimilating what cannot at all be constituted as good quality, and you’ll have the epiphany that the needle is finally starting to move.
It is a golden opportunity cost shaped like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, for what you had foregone that day to get all cylinders running irrespective of at what strength would most likely be the turning point to make your growth curve begin to grow exponentially when you find yourself reflecting on such journeys, a rationale that is probably very difficult to out best as to finding the willpower to continue the streak.