- Over the last few months, I've been super unmotivated,
and with everything that's happening in the world right now,
it just amplifies this feeling of being stuck.
(mellow digital music)
This is definitely a weird time to just be alive.
You know, I know a lot of you are probably feeling
the same way that I have of just being completely
unmotivated to do anything.
Like, I have this list of videos that I could create,
and essentially now I'm a full-time YouTuber,
so all I have to do is make videos.
Do things around the house as well,
but I wake up, I'll kinda tinker around a little bit,
and I'm finding myself just not able to move forward.
(mellow digital music)
Motivation is like a weird thing,
hop back a little bit.
You know, I got fired up to shoot the last couple videos,
but it's been these moments, and they're kinda fleeting,
of motivation where I woke up at 5:00 a.m.,
I was like, let's do this, let's get goin',
I shot a video, I edited it by noon,
everything was done, and I hit upload,
and I was like super fired up,
but then this morning came,
I've just been like, all right,
I'm gonna check some emails, I'm gonna have a coffee,
and hours go by, and I've just kind of like tinkered around,
not really doing much.
It doesn't help that I'm probably dressed
in my pajamas all day, too.
(mellow digital music)
How's the auto-focus on this camera?
You know, when it comes to times like these,
it's good to just get things out of your head,
and just start to strategize a bit,
so I've always been a big fan of writing things down
and physically doing it,
so a little whiteboard sesh could help.
(mellow digital music)
So right at the beginning of this year,
I lost all of the motivation to just create.
I just didn't wanna turn on the camera and hit record.
And ultimately, what got me going again
was just setting goals.
Goals are super powerful to give you that drive
to keep moving forward,
but when it comes to setting a goal,
it has to be realistic.
You can't just do some big, crazy goal
and expect that you're gonna obtain it.
It has to be something that you can realistically get to,
but also it needs to be a little bit harder
so that it's not like super easy to obtain.
Now what's really crazy is that 67% of people
who have a gym membership don't actually use them,
and I think one of the big sources for people not using
that membership is they just don't have the motivation
to go to the gym.
When it comes to fitness for me,
the reason that I work out every day
is that every six to nine months,
I schedule a climb.
(snow crunching)
And these climbs I can't just pick up and do tomorrow.
I have to train for these, and so that gives me
my motivation to keep working out every day,
because I've scheduled something and put it on the books.
Now goals are great to get you moving,
but I've come up with six different things
that for me help me keep the ball rolling even more
so that I don't end up in the kitchen
just looking for snacks.
So the first thing that works for me
to keep this motivation going
is to just treat every day like a normal day,
even when we're completely on lockdown right now.
You know, getting out of pajamas
and actually going about my day
as if it's a normal day
gets me moving in the right direction.
(mellow digital music)
Routine is super important,
and all of us are gonna have a different routine,
but for me, something that I've found is that every morning
I read from "The Daily Stoic"
and a book called "Human 365".
Now these are both daily meditations,
and so it's a quick thing to read,
but the authors give you some ways to think about your life
in a different perspective.
Now I particularly like "Human 365"
because the whole idea around this book
is becoming the next-level human,
and the idea of the next-level human
is becoming the best version of you,
that version of you that's always motivated,
and this comes from having control of your life,
rather than just reacting to the things
that happen to you in life.
Now before we go into my other five tricks
that I've come up with to keep me motivated,
I actually reached out to the author,
Doctor Jade Teta, and I asked him one question.
I wanted to know his thoughts around
how you stay motivated in a time of uncertainty,
and he sent me back this response.
- So what do we do in difficult times,
times of hardship, and times of uncertainty?
One of the most important things that we can do
is understand that we get to choose
how we perceive the situations we find ourselves in.
When we are in difficult situations,
we can choose whether this is gonna degrade us,
whether we're gonna blame, whether we're gonna complain,
or whether it's going to grow us,
whether we're gonna see the opportunities
for growth in the situation.
We can decide what this will mean, so if we're stuck,
and we are quarantined, or we're in prison,
or we're isolated, and we can't have the routines
that we once had, there's opportunity there,
and it's our job to find it.
There are opportunities in every single hardship.
You know, the Stoics talked about the idea
that there are certain things that we control,
and certain things that we don't control,
and they were really big on the idea
that the only thing we truly control
is the way we think about the situation,
how we perceive it.
Everything else is on loan.
We can be wealthy, and we can lose it.
We can be healthy, and lose it.
We can have love, and lose it.
What we have to understand is that pain and suffering,
while difficult, can be a path or a source
to incredible growth and meaning.
Because we humans are not islands unto ourselves.
What we have to realize
is that we thrive when others thrive,
and we have this deep-seeded drive,
all of us, I believe, to make a difference
and be of use in the world, and so these opportunities
come about through hardships, and uncertainty,
and difficult times for us to show up, in a way,
to bring our unique gifts to the world
in a way that can make a difference.
It's not "everything happens for a reason."
It's things happen, and then we choose a reason,
and that's how hardship becomes growth,
and how pain becomes purpose.
- Jade has a ton of insight
in what it means to be a next-level human,
and I highly suggest you check out his book, "Human 365".
Now let's go into the rest of my ways
that I stay motivated throughout the day.
The second thing that I do is I schedule out everything,
and schedule is super important,
and you don't wanna be thinking of your schedule
while you're doing it.
What I find that works for me
is creating a schedule beforehand,
so today, I'm gonna build out my schedule for tomorrow,
so that when I wake up, and I start my routine,
I know exactly what I'm gonna do throughout the day
rather than just kind of winging it.
And especially working from home.
I can get super distracted,
and I have a three-week-old newborn,
and she is cute, so I wanna hang out with her,
and so I'll find myself hours later
just hanging out with her, playing around with some toys.
You know, a big part of this is also social media
and things like news.
With everything going on in the world,
you know, it's hard to pull yourself away from the news,
and social media in general is built
to keep your attention.
So what I found that best works for me
is to schedule out my time for social media,
news, and even email, like I don't touch my email
until a certain time of the day,
and I only look at it for say, an hour or two,
and this ties into the third thing that I do,
which is just limit consumption.
I tried to pull myself away from everything,
and really, like I said, schedule times for it,
so only give myself the freedom to do social media
later in the evening versus all day.
Now the fourth thing that I do
is surround myself with family and friends.
Now right now, we're isolated, we're alone,
but we're really not.
The power of video chatting, and the power of
just picking up the phone and having a conversation
is so prevalent in today's world
that you're never alone, and if you're ever feeling alone,
just reach out to one of your friends,
or reach out to a family member, because everyone
is just a few clicks away.
The fifth thing that I found
that works for me is create a realistic to-do list,
and this is not just like a list of 100,000 things
that I need to get done.
It's taking the things that I need to do
and putting it in a way that makes it
so that I knock stuff off the task list,
and there are times when I'll focus on my list,
and there are times that I'll put it away.
One huge thing that works for me
is get everything outta my head, and put it into my list.
I use an app called Things,
and every time that I think about something
that I need to do, I put it into my inbox,
and then later, I schedule a time to go through my list
and actually sort things based on
whether I need to do it now, later,
or just sometime in the future.
What I found is that when I put things on my to-do list
and I don't do them for a super long time,
it really pulls at my motivation,
because I have it still sitting in the back of my head
'cause I know it's on my list.
So I go through, and I clean up my list,
I'll take things off, and I'll just be like,
"I'm not gonna do this."
Or I'll put it into something where I say,
hey, I'll check this on this date, and I schedule things.
Now my sixth trick to kind of
keep myself motivated is to move, physically move.
(lips smacking)
This is another reason why I work out every day.
If I wake up, I do my morning routine,
and then I get a workout in, I'm usually good to go all day,
and I'm super motivated, whereas when I don't work out,
I actually start feeling more fatigued
as the day goes on, and I really lose my motivation.
If I don't have the time to work out,
I'll go for a walk, or go outside.
A really cool thing to do is just get up in the morning,
grab your coffee, and go for a walk around the block.
All right, guys, I just wanna say
thanks for watchin' this video,
and thanks for stickin' around 'til the end.
I would love to hear from you.
Do you have any tricks or hacks that you use
to keep yourself motivated throughout the day?
Put 'em down below in the comments, and guys, that's it.
I'll see you on the next one.