Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F__k (2016, HarperOne) - libgen.li

Emotional inspiration → Motivation → Desirable action
If you want to accomplish something but don’t feel motivated or inspired,
then you assume you’re just screwed. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s
not until a major emotional life event occurs that you can generate enough
motivation to actually get off the couch and do something.
The thing about motivation is that it’s not only a three-part chain, but an
endless loop:
Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation
→ Action → Etc.
Your actions create further emotional reactions and inspirations and
move on to motivate your future actions. Taking advantage of this knowledge,
we can actually reorient our mindset in the following way:
Action → Inspiration → Motivation
If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do
something—anything, really—and then harness the reaction to that action as
a way to begin motivating yourself.
I call this the “do something” principle. After using it myself to build my
business, I began teaching it to readers who came to me perplexed by their
own VCR questions: “How do I apply for a job?” or “How do I tell this guy I
want to be his girlfriend?” and the like.
During the first couple years I worked for myself, entire weeks would go
by without my accomplishing much, for no other reason than that I was
anxious and stressed about what I had to do, and it was too easy to put
everything off. I quickly learned, though, that forcing myself to do something,
even the most menial of tasks, quickly made the larger tasks seem much
easier. If I had to redesign an entire website, I’d force myself to sit down and
would say, “Okay, I’ll just design the header right now.” But after the header
was done, I’d find myself moving on to other parts of the site. And before I
knew it, I’d be energized and engaged in the project.
The author Tim Ferriss relates a story he once heard about a novelist who
had written over seventy novels. Someone asked the novelist how he was
able to write so consistently and remain inspired and motivated. He replied,