Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

What to do when you "don't feel like it".

9 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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0:56

A short spoken-advice segment by Brian Johnson advising listeners to deliberately increase their intensity when they "don't feel like" doing tasks. He recommends raising effort to an 8–9 on a notional scale, accepting that lack of motivation is normal, and accelerating recovery from a motivational "glitch" by focusing on obvious, immediate actions (e.g., workouts, dishes, sending an email).

Chapters

When you feel off and you don't feel like doing something, I want you to dial up your intensity. Don't go to 11, don't go to 21 to 10, but bring me up to 8 or 9. When you're at a 1 or a 2 or a 3 or a 4 and you don't feel like doing it, do your dishes like you mean it. You don't feel like doing it, but you're doing it. You don't feel like doing your push ups, but you're doing them. You got to expect to not feel motivated. Often you're going to have days you're not motivated. A champion knows that. And you're going to have bad shot after bad shot after bad shot, whatever. Perfect. It starts by when you notice. And what we want to do is accelerate the time from glitch to recovery. Glitch, recovery. So in any given moment you can ask yourself, what do I need to do right now? Usually we have a decent sense, well, I need to do the workout I said I would do, or I need to clean the dishes, or I need to stop working, or I need to send this email. So in that moment it's more clear and we want to focus on the things that are obvious more than the things that are harder to notice.