What to Do When You Have No Motivation to Get Stuff Done | 126

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

  No motivation to get stuff done? You’ve probably already told yourself you just need to push through, but what if that’s the wrong move? Today, we’re figuring out what your lack of motivation is actually telling you.  

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast. 

Hey, hey, welcome back. Today, we’re talking about something that came straight from you. When I went through a recent survey, this is exactly what one solopreneur said, “Why can’t I just get things done when I have no motivation to do them?” So today, we’re going through five reasons why you might be feeling this way and what to do about it.

But before we dive in, if task overload is part of what’s killing your motivation, which we’ll talk about, I have a free workshop that’s going to help. It’s called Three Steps to Say Goodbye to Task Overload, and it guides you through exactly how to clear that task pile so you… so that getting started actually feels possible. The link is in the show notes.

Now, let’s get into the episode. So like I said, we’re gonna go through five reasons why you have no motivation to get things done, and I want you to listen for the one that resonates the most because the fix is going to be completely different depending on which one it is.

So let’s go ahead and dive in into reason number one. The first reason why you might not be motivated to get things done is the fact that you just don’t want to do it. You just don’t want to do it, and that’s fine, but you have to admit it. You have to acknowledge that that’s what it is. So it’s going to be worth to ask yourself, does this task actually need to be on your list at all? If you don’t feel like doing it, why is it on your to-do list? Is it something that someone put on there? Did you put it on there? Did you feel like you needed to do it? Like, what is it? Sometimes this lack of motivation is really your gut telling you that this isn’t the right task, the right time, or the right direction.

In my case, a lot of the times when I don’t wanna do something, it comes with uneasiness. I don’t feel peace, and that is a big indicator that it’s not the right move for me. There’s been so many times where this has happened. Like in episode 107, I talked about when I took a break from the podcast for a lot longer than I expected. I just didn’t feel good showing up anymore. I didn’t know what to talk about. I just didn’t feel like doing it, and so I stopped. I stopped doing it. You know, I am…

This is gonna be a little bit embarrassing, but it’s tr- it’s the truth and it’s facts and it is what it is. But I’ve been having this podcast for, I think I’ve, I think I’ve actually reached the four-year mark. It’s been four years, and on my episode, what episode is this? 126. Four years, and I’m at 126. Why? Because I have taken so many breaks. There’s been so many seasons where I just didn’t want to do the podcast, and hello, I’m back, I’m here again, and nothing happened. Like my business didn’t break. Um, I’m in a phase right now where I don’t want to be on social media. I don’t want to do it.

And so I don’t know when was the last time I posted on any social media platform. It’s been several months at this point. So before you do anything else with this task, you want to ask yourself, ” Is this something that I actually want to do?” And if the answer is no, then try to figure out why that is, and that in itself will, will give you a lot of the clarity that you need.

But don’t keep forcing it if it’s something that you just don’t want to do All right, reason number two could be that you just don’t know where to start. So you might not feel motivated to do a specific task because it feels overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start, which means that you don’t start at all. This happens when a task list only lives inside of your head, or it’s, like, super vague, super broad, and your brain already has so many other things in it. Like, you have so much going on that even just trying to figure out where to start can be exhausting, especially if you haven’t even done anything.

So if you’re already feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and tired before you even get started on a task or project, then, you know, you’re gonna go back and be like, “I don’t, I don’t wanna do this. I don’t, I don’t feel motivated to do this.” So you avoid it, you put it off, you procrastinate, and then you tell yourself that, like, “Oh, it’s just today. It’s… I just don’t feel like doing it today.”

But then every single day it’s the same thing because the structure that would make it easier to get started is missing. So when you have a system, a clear next step, a place where your task list lives outside of your head with all of the details, all of the steps of everything involved, everything related to that task or project becomes a lot less heavy.

So if this is where you’re stuck, that is what the free workshop that I mentioned earlier is going to help you with, is going to help you with exactly this. It’s going to give you that starting point that you might be missing, and that could be one of the reasons why you feel demotivated to get it done because you just don’t even know where to start. So that’s reason number two.

Reason number three is that you’re just flat out tired and you need to rest. You are just tired, and when you’re tired, the answer is not to push through. Okay? This is very much that hustle mentality, that hustle culture that is like, “Just get it done. You got this, just push through.” Like, no. If you’re not motivated to get something done, sometimes it’s just the fact that your brain and your body is telling you, “Please, no more. Please give me a break.”

So there is a difference between avoiding something, you know, whether it’s because of one of the two reasons we’ve discussed, or because you’re genuinely depleted, you’re genuinely tired. When you are running on empty, motivation is not gonna show up, no matter how many productivity hacks you try. It’s just not, because you are trying to push through the exhaustion, and that doesn’t make you more productive. It makes you slower, it makes you resentful of the thing that you’re doing, and it makes you more likely to burn out. Okay?

So episode 121 is where I talk about what productivity actually means, like my version of productivity, my definition of it, because sometimes what we call a motivation problem is really just our body and our mind asking us to slow down. And so that episode will help you kind of understand, like change your mind around what productivity actually means for you as a solopreneur. So you can stop seeing things in this way, so you can stop trying to force yourself to push through. Okay?

And this one was super relevant for me, even just yesterday when I mapped out the outline of this. I was writing the outline for this exact episode, like this exact episode, and yeah, I was feeling not motivated to do it. And it’s funny because that’s literally what I’m talking about, and I know it’s something that I hear so often. And so what I did was I went and took a nap. I was like, “Yeah, no, I’m tired. I feel tired, so I’m not going to push through because even if I try to push through, it’s not going to be my best work, and I’ll probably make mistakes.”

And so I went to take a nap, and then I came back and I finished not only this outline, but the next two episode outlines as well. Okay, so take a break if you’re tired, rest, take a nap, go to sleep early, skip a work day. It’s all a productive choice, and sometimes that is why you’re not motivated. You’re just tired. So that’s reason number three

Reason number four is that you just might be in this season, in a new season in your life, which we talked about in the previous episode where, um, seasons of life can really affect your capacity as a business owner. So this can be things like summer, the holidays, a big life transition. Your attention is genuinely being pulled somewhere else. And so that in itself might make you demotivated. For example, in the summer, you might be… You might want to be outside more. I live in Texas, so it is freaking hot, so that’s not me That is not me. But what is me is the fact that when my son is home, and he’s a new teenager, I just want to spend time with him, and I, you know, mentally struggle a little bit with, like, “Do I work? Do I spend time with him? But he’s here every day, but I also need to work. You know, I got responsibilities.” So, like, that in itself makes it demotivating, right?

Because that is the season that I’m in. I am in the summer season where I want to spend more time with my kids. Um, you might be in that sim- similar situation. You might feel like, oh, like, you know, maybe it’s Christmas time. So for me, Christmas, I’m definitely checked out. I am so checked out during Christmas. I love Christmas. It’s my absolute favorite holiday, and my brain and me, like, we’re just not interested in working. And if I’m working, I’m trying to figure out how can I incorporate Christmassy things into my business. So I am mentally checked out.

So if this is where you’re at, then the best thing that you can do is to adjust your expectations and just accept that your to-do list might not match the capacity that you actually have right now, and that things just need to shift a little bit to what you actually have, right? The capacity and the energy that you actually do have. Again, go back and listen to the last episode, um, 125, where I talk about the seasons of life.

So with this one, give yourself permission to be in the season that you’re actually in. Your business will still be there when the season shifts, whether it ever goes back, whether it’s just changing in a different way moving forward. But this is another reason why you might be demotivated, and if this is it, there’s a fix. There is a fix. You just have to adjust some of the things that you have been doing. So that is reason number four

Now, the final reason here is there are just too many steps involved. Maybe you do have a system, maybe you do have things out of your brain and onto some to-do list somewhere, but if the steps aren’t broken down enough, then that’s a problem. Because sometimes what looks like one task is actually a whole project in disguise. So when you look at your to-do list, it looks like kind of doable, and then you start doing it and you’re like, “Wait, hold on. Why can’t I get this done? Why is this taking me so long?”

And that’s all because it looks smaller than what it actually is. So this is where you actually need to break down these tasks into smaller steps, and even ask yourself if every step needs to be done by you. There’s automation and then delegation for a reason, okay? Because not everything needs to be done by you. A task should have one clear action, but if yours has five things hiding inside of that task, then it’s gonna be harder for you to start it. So for me, when I first started posting on YouTube, it was so hard for me. I didn’t have a YouTube system. I didn’t know what steps were involved. I was still trying to get the hang of it, still trying to break things down.

But eventually, when I broke down my system, when I created my task management system for YouTube content, it got so much easier to post. And in fact, once I’m done with this batch of episodes that I have coming up, YouTube will be next. And I haven’t done a YouTube video in a few months, but, you know, my system’s there, it’s waiting for me, it’s already done, and it’s gonna be easy for me to just jump right back in. So if a task keeps getting skipped over because you don’t feel motivated, you have a system, and you’re just like, “I don’t know what else I need to do,” then you might need to reevaluate your system and see if it needs to improve, okay?

See if there are steps in it that might be too big that need to be broken down. And when you do that, then you’ll start creating a task management system. So those are the five reasons why you might feel not motivated to get things done.

And if any of these hit close to home, especially reason number two or number five, where it’s about the steps or the system, or just feeling overwhelmed with all the things that you can’t seem to get through- Then definitely check out my free workshop. It’s three steps to say goodbye to task overload, and in it, I guide you through how to figure out what’s a task versus what’s a project in disguise and where systems are missing in your business. It’s completely free, it’s practical, and it’s just under 60 minutes long, so the link is in the show notes. Definitely go check that out.

All right, so let’s recap before we wrap up. So the five reasons are: you don’t actually want to do it, you don’t know where to start, you’re tired and you need to rest, it’s a season that you’re in, or the steps aren’t broken down enough. If you need help with number two or number five, go check out my free workshop. All right. That’s a wrap on today’s episode. If this one resonated, share it with a fellow business owner who needs to hear it, too, and I’ll see you in the next one.

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.