- So pretend you're this guy
and you were really productive earlier in the month.
In fact, you were kind of killing it.
You're reading lots of books, hitting the gym consistently,
and actually getting your work in on time.
But then something happened,
maybe you woke up on the wrong side of the bed,
maybe an invisible demon ghost violated you in your sleep.
Whatever the case may be,
everything seems just a bit harder to do.
You're tired.
You've lost all the motivation you had
to keep being awesome.
And you can't even remember why you were being productive
in the first place.
And that mental clarity that you seemed
to be the beneficiary of just yesterday,
seems to have ran away in the night.
And unfortunately this lack of motivation starts
to seep into the other areas of your life.
The thought dawns on you to go to the gym
and you're too lazy to do it. So you skip the gym that day.
One day turns into two days, two days turns into a week.
You're also starting to buy more junk food,
watch more TV, play more video games.
And not only are you not doing the things
you know you should be doing, but you don't even want to.
You can't even remember why you were being productive
in the first place.
Why are we still here?
For a lot of people, these long periods of success followed
by long periods of self destruction
and failure seem to be a common pattern.
And while this issue is a deep psychological issue
that I'll dive into in a later video,
I wanted to give you guys a more practical guide
as to how I get myself out of these type
of pseudo depressive ruts and start being productive again.
Now, before we dive into these really powerful strategies,
I just wanna preface the video with a couple of things.
Number one is that this video is not meant
to be a replacement for going to therapy
if you actually have clinical depression.
I'm not a doctor, I'm just a dude,
and I talk about what works for me.
Second of all, even though this video
is about how to get out of a rut efficiently or quickly,
that's all relative.
You're usually not gonna get out of a rut overnight.
Okay, so strategy number one is to utilize
the do something principle.
This principle is the catalyst for action.
If you don't have the motivation to do something,
you need something that'll spark some sort of action,
something to get the momentum going,
something to get the ball rolling.
And the do something principle is a means to take action
when you don't have the motivation to do anything.
So most people think that in order to take action
on anything, you need to be motivated to do that.
And motivation comes when you're inspired by something.
So for instance, say you're browsing Reddit
or something and you come across a Matt D'Avella video
and by the end, he says something that strikes a chord
with you and you're inspired to take action.
That inspiration served as the adequate motivation
to take action on your goals.
But to do something principle dictates that inspiration,
motivation, action is not a linear sequence.
It's an endless loop and you can start
wherever you wanna start.
So it's far more efficient to start with action
and let that action become the inspiration
and the motivation necessary to take further action.
So you may be thinking, thanks genius,
if I'm unmotivated to do something,
then I should just do something, that's really helpful.
But you actually take action
without motivation all the time.
Do you need some sort of huge inspirational epiphany
to take a shower? No, it's just something you do.
These monotonous actions are the very actions
you should be using as momentum to take further action.
If you're just sitting there waiting for inspiration
to strike you, go brush your teeth.
Brushing your teeth is a little constructive action
that will give you momentum into taking further action.
If you have to write a giant essay, don't think to yourself,
oh, I have to go and write my giant 4,000-word essay.
Just say, I'm gonna open up the word doc,
write whatever comes to my mind for one minute.
And that's it. That's all I have to do.
But once you start writing,
you will tend to want to write more
because you've convinced yourself to get there.
That is in essence to do something principle.
Now, strategy number two seems counter-intuitive
to what I just said,
and that is to reward yourself for small wins.
Now, if you follow this channel at all,
I am not a pat yourself on the back
and everyone gets an award kind of guy.
So if you're in the same boat,
but you might cringe at the thought of rewarding yourself
for taking a shower or something like that,
because you know you're capable of so much more,
but the need to reward yourself for small wins,
especially if you're in a vulnerable situation
is a psychological necessity.
And it has everything to do with the fact
that you have basically two sides of your brain.
And I'm not talking about right and left,
I'm talking more about the more primal part of your brain,
which is closer to the stem
which is responsible for motivation
and emotion and stuff like that.
And your more logical, abstract, moralistic part
of your brain, which is present more
in the prefrontal cortex.
So if your prefrontal cortex knows to use
the do something principle in order to convince
your primal side of your brain to take action on something,
it's important that you're not too iron-fisted with this
because it's a negotiation with yourself.
Don't be a slave driver to the primal side of your brain
or your primal side of your brain won't feel listened to,
it'll lash out and it won't wanna do anything
that your logical side of your brain wants it to do.
So you almost need to use your higher judgment
to provide compassionate guidance
to the primal part of your brain
and very gradually win it over.
If you're too lazy to pretty much do anything other
than sit around all day
and you use the do something principle
to convince your primal side of your brain
to brush your teeth, take a shower,
get some nice clothes on and clean your kitchen
and you start to get really tired
and agitated after this, take a break.
It may sound suspect and your logical side
of your brain knows that you should be doing
a lot more than that.
Just take it easy,
reward yourself for doing something constructive for once
after days of bingeing dopamine,
and just relax and have a good time.
So you might be thinking,
how the heck am I supposed to get out of a rut
if I don't ride this momentum out into the sunset?
That's what tip number three is all about.
So strategy number three is all about progressive overload.
It's very similar to the philosophy of lifting weights
and getting stronger.
Instead of yo-yoing between taking crazy amounts of action
and then your primal brain lashing out
and going into long periods of self-destruction,
you should be massaging yourself into organically growing
a lifestyle that you gradually get used to,
that's more and more productive,
and you do more and more every day while rewarding yourself
for the small wins and comparing yourself
to who you were yesterday rather than
who someone else is today.
So for instance, if you develop a game plan over the course
of seven days to get out of a rut,
that's a lot more realistic than just trying
to be productive all of a sudden.
So say day one, you can't really do much other
than go on the internet for long periods of time.
On this day, if you convince yourself
to take pretty much any sort of constructive action,
that should be sufficient for the day.
Day one should just be about gradually taking
a little bit more action and being happy with that.
And the next day, remind yourself that that wasn't so bad
and it actually felt pretty good to take action
and try to do a little bit more.
And if you do this day after day,
then gradually and organically,
both sides of your brain will be in agreeance.
And you'll very comfortably start to rise from the ashes
like a phoenix and become the person
that you were earlier in that month.
I can't stress how important this is,
managing expectations, being patient with yourself
and letting your higher faculties be very communicative
with the more primal and emotional sides of your brain.
This synergy between both sides of your brain is integral
for maintaining long-term success.
And you can eventually be very reliably and sustainably,
living the kind of life
that you've always wanted to be living.
I wanna give a huge shout out to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video.
For those of you who don't know,
Skillshare is an online learning platform
which has thousands of classes covering dozens
of entrepreneurial, productivity and artistic topics.
It's also extremely affordable with an annual membership.
It comes in at less than $10 a month.
I just finished watching my friend,
Thomas Frank's productivity masterclass on Skillshare.
Taking Thomas Frank's productivity master class
helped me realize that one of the most important ways
I can stay in that sustained productivity lifestyle
is to reduce the amount of friction there is
to actually being productive.
A lot of this can be achieved by creating a reliable,
streamlined productivity system
that helps you get things done without the headache.
Because Skillshare is sponsoring this video,
they're offering you guys, The Better Ideas viewers
a two-month free trial, which means for two months,
absolutely free, you get unlimited access
to every single class on Skillshare.
So right now you can check out
Thomas Frank's productivity course for free
using the link in the description.
And while you're at it,
you might as well check out all the other classes
on there as well.
Thanks again Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
If you liked this video, make sure to hit like,
because when you like it the algorithm blesses me
with shoving this video in front of other people's faces,
helping them out.
This will be especially helpful if somebody is in a rut
and because you liked this video,
it ended up in their subscription
and this video is able to help them climb out of their rut.
I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts
on how you climb out of ruts.
Everyone has their own little strategies
that helps them get momentum back into their life.
So I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
If you're lurking here, consider subscribing
and hitting the bell icon so you don't miss videos
like this in the future.
Tons of amazing stuff happening on the channel.
You're probably noticing that there's more sponsor videos.
This allows me to put more effort into the videos
because I spend less and less almost no time now
doing freelance videography.
So I can re-dedicate that time
to making amazing content for you guys.
But yeah, that's all for today.
Thank you for watching
and we'll catch you in the next video.
(gentle upbeat music)