How to get motivated when you don't feel like doing anything

Here's how to get motivated when you don't feel like doing anything: stop waiting for the feeling. Pick one small action for today, expect the first few minutes to feel bad, and start anyway. Often the motivation turns up a few minutes after you begin.

Alok Kanojia, known online as Dr K, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. By his own account, he all but failed out of college while playing video games for up to 20 hours a day, and was rejected by 120 medical schools over three years before he got in (The Mel Robbins Podcast, 2024). Asked on that podcast what people get wrong about motivation, he gave an answer that sounds backwards:

"The biggest mistake we make with motivation is that we try to increase it." Dr K (Alok Kanojia), The Mel Robbins Podcast

His reasoning is that motivation rises and falls with your emotions, so a plan that waits for it stalls whenever your mood does.

Why do I have no motivation to do anything?

Dr K's answer is that you probably do have motivation, pointing the wrong way. "It's not that you have no motivation," he says. "It's that you have a very powerful motivation to not move" (Dr K on The Mel Robbins Podcast). Before you go to the gym, both the pain of going and the pleasure of staying home are hypothetical. Once you start moving towards it, the pain becomes real while the benefit is still far off. In his words, moving towards a goal "oftentimes comes at a cost before a benefit."

Psychologists describe the same pull in four parts. In temporal motivation theory, as the American Psychological Association's dictionary summarizes it, putting things off is more likely when you doubt you'll succeed, the result doesn't matter much to you, the reward is far away and you're drawn to what you can have now (APA Dictionary of Psychology). Each part becomes a question to ask yourself, with a fix to match.

A four-question check for when you can't get going

If you've been calling yourself lazy, our guide to what procrastination means explains why that label doesn't fit.

What to do on a flat, low-energy day

Some days nothing in you wants to start, and those are the days to run a small test instead of waiting. A clinical self-help workbook, Put Off Procrastinating, suggests rating your motivation from 0 to 10 before a task you don't feel like doing, working on it for a set time (5, 10 or 30 minutes), then rating it again. Its authors say people often find they feel more energized and motivated once they've started, and that the "better time" they were waiting for rarely comes, or comes late (CCI).

Say it's a phone call you've been dodging for a week. Before, you're at a 2. Five minutes later, with the number dialed or the notes for the call written, you might be at a 4, or still at a 2. Either way you have a real number to set against the story that later will feel better.

Our 1h Protocol to Stop Procrastinating builds this test in: you start a five-minute timer on your real task and notice how you feel before and after, and if it didn't start, the first step in your protocol gets smaller.

How to get motivated: act before you feel like it

Beyond the test, Dr K's approach is to act whatever you feel. Here it is in three steps, with what Robbins and Pychyl add.

1. Choose today's action instead of the outcome

"Sober for a year" or "lose the weight" are outcomes, Dr K points out; you can't get up and do them right now. An action is something you can do today. His 100th medical school application was the same action as his first, he says; what made it heavier was the weight in his mind of the 99 rejections before it. He even tells people to "abandon every day," because a goal of meditating every day turns 39 good days into a failure on day 40. Focus on today (Dr K on The Mel Robbins Podcast).

So "get fit" becomes "walk for 20 minutes after lunch today," and "sort out my finances" becomes "open the banking app and list this month's direct debits."

2. Expect it to feel bad

Most of us picture the reward and get ambushed by the effort. Dr K suggests the opposite. The night before, tell yourself plainly that tomorrow you won't feel like doing it, and prepare for that. He says this does two things: you're not caught off guard, and when you actually do the thing, it's usually less bad than you expected (Dr K on The Mel Robbins Podcast).

Mel Robbins, a podcast host who calls herself a former chronic procrastinator, makes the same point about bigger leaps. You will never feel ready to do things that scare you, she says, and sitting around waiting to feel like it is "a recipe for never seeing your dreams come true" (On Purpose with Jay Shetty).

"You cannot wait to feel ready. You cannot wait to feel motivated." Mel Robbins, The Mel Robbins Podcast, episode 42

3. Start small and let the feeling catch up

Then start, and keep the start small. The procrastination researcher Tim Pychyl has a rule of thumb for this: motivation follows action, rather than the other way round (Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, 31:23). His pager studies and the five-minute start that comes out of them are in our guide to how to stop procrastinating.

Afterwards, Dr K suggests sitting for two or three minutes and asking how it went: was it worth it, and what was hard? In his view, that pause is how your brain learns the effort paid off (Dr K on The Mel Robbins Podcast).

If the day didn't start

Some days the start won't happen. For a missed goal, Dr K suggests a short review in place of the usual round of self-blame. Was the goal reasonable in the first place? Where did the wish for it come from? What got in the way? He compares it to a post-mortem in medicine, where doctors look at what went wrong and what went right, and warns against jumping to a fix before you understand what happened (Dr K on The Mel Robbins Podcast).

"I can't control whether I get into medical school, but I can control whether I beat myself up." Dr K (Alok Kanojia), The Mel Robbins Podcast

The same workbook warns that beating yourself up usually backfires, because it makes the task feel more like a chore (CCI); our guide to procrastination guilt covers how to forgive a missed day without letting yourself off the hook. Then shrink the next start. If five minutes didn't happen, make it two, or make the action smaller: open the document instead of writing the section. Judge the week by the number of days you started; one missed day doesn't cancel the others.

Tonight, set up tomorrow's one action

Before bed, write down one action for tomorrow, small enough to start on a flat day, and add Dr K's warning underneath: you won't feel like it, and that's expected. In the morning, do the action before you stop to check how motivated you feel.

You don't need to feel ready for the free part of the 1h Protocol to Stop Procrastinating either. It ends with one first step for the task you keep putting off. Start free

Frequently asked questions

How do I get motivated when I have no motivation?

Don't wait for the feeling. Pick one small action for today, expect the first few minutes to be uncomfortable, and start for five minutes. Psychiatrist Alok Kanojia (Dr K) argues that trying to raise your motivation first is the mistake, because motivation rises and falls with your mood.

Why do I have no motivation to do anything?

Often because the effort comes now and the reward later, so staying put wins. Temporal motivation theory says motivation drops when you doubt you'll succeed, the result feels unimportant, the reward is far off or something tempting is close. If a low mood or exhaustion lasts and won't lift, talk to a doctor.

Am I lazy or unmotivated?

Probably neither, in the way people mean it. A clinical self-help workbook describes putting things off as a common part of human behavior and not the same as laziness. Psychiatrist Alok Kanojia (Dr K) argues that feeling stuck is often a strong motivation not to move, because staying put pays off straight away.

Does motivation come before or after action?

Mostly after. Procrastination researcher Tim Pychyl's rule of thumb is that motivation follows action, and in a clinical workbook's before-and-after test, people often find they feel more motivated once they've started. The "better time" they were waiting for, the authors note, rarely comes.

How do I motivate myself to study or work?

Make the plan specific and small. UC Berkeley's health service suggests replacing "I will study for my quiz this week" with set times, such as Monday 10 to 11 am (UC Berkeley UHS). Then start with five minutes on one action, with your phone out of reach.

Sources

This article draws on podcast episodes with Alok Kanojia, Tim Pychyl and Mel Robbins, the APA's summary of temporal motivation theory and a clinical self-help workbook.

• How to get motivated even when you don't feel like it (The Mel Robbins Podcast with Dr Alok Kanojia, podcast episode, machine transcript, 2024)
• World's leading expert on how to solve procrastination: Dr Tim Pychyl (Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, podcast episode, 2022)
• The only way to stop procrastinating (The Mel Robbins Podcast, episode 42, podcast episode, 2023)
• Mel Robbins on why you can't stop procrastinating (On Purpose with Jay Shetty, podcast episode, machine transcript, 2021)
• Procrastination (APA Dictionary of Psychology, reference entry, updated 2026)
• Put Off Procrastinating (Centre for Clinical Interventions, Government of Western Australia, clinical self-help workbook, 2008, revised since)
• Refresh for Finals: study skills and procrastination (UC Berkeley University Health Services, student guidance, undated)