Originally posted by Issue313
I need to sit down and do a project that will take about 2 days, but I keep putting it off. Most of the failures in my life are directly related to procrastination - I just don't do the work that I need to do when someone isn't hassling me. I do better in an environment where I have a boss, but I don't want a boss.
I don't know why I'm so unmotivated. I don't think I'm lazy. I like learning, I just don't like working.
Why do you need to do it? Is it something you want to do or something where there's a negative external consequence for not doing it? If it's just something you want to do but can't motivate yourself to do you can always just give up on it, typically people don't have a hard time doing things they actually want to do. I think the mindset of "doing it because it's good for you" is something of a pathology, and generally a very unsustainable motivational strategy.
I remember in highschool I was an edgy little cunt and wanted to read Nietzsche because, hey, that's what edgy little cunts do. I tried and tried to get through thus spoke zarathustra, tried every tick in the book, rewarding myself for reading a few pages, blocking off time to do it, unplugging all the electronics so I wouldn't get distracted. It was a slog and I gave up half way though. I realized I didn't actually want to read the stupid book, I just wanted to say I had read the book. It wasn't until many years later that I had kinda read "around" Nietzsche that I started to have a genuine interest in what he had written and when I picked the book up again I got through it in like two weeks, which is pretty quick for me.
It's hard to do things for external reasons, empirically we can't do very much of it for very long (the "ego depletion" theory of motivation is pretty well supported). Doing things you want to do is easy though, no one has ever need positive visualization or time management skills to eat a bowl of ice cream. If you haven't sufficiently convinced yourself that the thing you're trying to do is worth doing then you're just going to be fighting yourself every step of the way. If you don't want to do something and there isn't a natural external force that's pushing you to do it then just don't do it. Life's too short to spend struggling to get yourself to do stuff you don't want to.