We have all been there, moments when we feel completely uninterested and even bored by what we are doing. Everyone goes through that, like Steve Jobs used to use analogies comparing love life with work life:
“…As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it..” -SJobs
This also applies for motivation, you can not expect to be at the same level of motivation, excitement, passion & energy ALL THE TIME.. specially throughout long periods of time..
Like in a long therm relationship there will be moments of boredom and disinterest, but when you work on it and remember WHY you are together, WHY you love that person, WHY you want to keep building a life with that person, WHY you admire that person, and so on…. Suddenly you smile ☺️ and get excited, motivated and proud again of your relationship, then start investing more time in re-flourish it, making you and your partner feel like when you were first dating or even better in a more loving mature way.. 🥰
No, this is not a blog about relationships 😅 but it is such a good analogy to use because it is exactly what happens with work and projects.
When you start you are ON FIRE! 🤩 everything is about your new job or your new project your mind can’t stop thinking about it and dreaming with all the possibilities, everything is a possibility, even problems can look more like challenges to you and like Barney Stinson you immediately answer in your head “Challenge accepted!” 😏
Then time passes by, you face several challenges along the way and things do not come out as you imagined, but you still kind of wish it can work even when you have no motivation to continue anymore…
This is the moment when you have to sit down, acknowledge how you feel and (like you would do in long term relationships) :
1. REMEMBER your WHY’s : why you started in the first place, why you used to love it, why you thought it was such a good idea, why you wanted to do it no matter what, why you couldn’t stop thinking about it.. 🤔💭
2. Then you can start objectively defining if those “whys” apply today still.. or might want to even redefine those “whys”. Because you have change, your perspective has changed your ideals have changed, you name it.. for any reason it will be healthy to do a check up of your whys and when needed simply redefine them. (like pivoting in a business after you have learnt what the market actually needs/wants to pay for) 😉
3. Design a sustainable long term plan: Maybe you actually need some tools to help you easy the load of work, maybe you need to have a talk with your boss or maybe you need to commit some weekly time to invest in your project without distractions. (here are some tips on making that a habit that sticks)
But whatever you design now will be more realistic, you have by now the experience of having faced some of those challenges that threw you off the path, so you are actually wiser, less naive and more aware on what to expect so you can plan for it and make it sustainable in the long term. *
After this process you will realise if your WHY was strong enough to keep going and get “re-inspired” or if it is actually a good moment to let it go and move forward with something else or just keep searching (just like” as with all matters of the heart”) .
*sustainable long term: This is a very important matter to mention: if you keep doing things expecting “easy & fast” results please stop and don’t do it at all in the first place. Really, I can not explain with more passion how sad it makes me to see so many people looking for easy fast paths to “success”. Internet has been selling too much crap on the idea of making things easy and fast/immediate and it really doesn’t work that way, nothing is fast and easy, every success you see has behind it thousands of hours of hard work, consistency and patience.
Want to learn to code? Here is my favourite platform where I am learning.
Thank you for reading! There is a podcast episode where a share a bit more about my own process of remembering my whys for this blog ! 😀
Check it out here: and make sure to subscribe 😀
The Yogi Coder 