https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/creating-in-flow/202603/7-ways-to-get-started-when-you-cant-just-do-it#:~:text=Remember%20that%20we,what%20you%27re%20creating
" Remember that we don’t have _complete control over what we accomplish.
In setting goals, it's important to accept that you will only be able to predict the results of your efforts. Writers and other creatives of many kinds must learn this.
You could be doing everything extremely well, and still not reach a goal that depends on others to need or want what you're creating."
7 Ways to Get Started When You Can't "Just Do It"
When your motivation is low, examining your true intentions can jumpstart action.
Updated March 31, 2026 Reviewed by Devon Frye
If you’re a born procrastinator, you’ve probably spent a lot of time seeking a surefire formula that will get you to start, stick to, and/or finish work on your own top goals. You may also have discovered that your procrastinatory habits have the uncanny ability to transition from one anticipated goal to a totally different one.
As a personal example, I truly enjoy writing—most of the time—and at some point after I embarked on a writing career, I learned to do it without a lot of fuss. Yet when it comes to exercise—something I know is critical for staying healthy as I age—I have demonstrated a remarkable ability to come up with excuses (think: rationalizations) for not doing it regularly. That's because knowing you should do a thing isn't always the same as wanting to do it.
And wishing that we could get the results without effort, as many among us have done, doesn't necessarily mean we're lazy. But it may mean we haven't yet come across the right motivation.
Here's where a new book by Chris Bailey, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start, could come in handy. It features fresh insights to add to your personal “do it” arsenal, and he writes with endearing self-deprecation and what seems like a great deal of compassion for the habitual procrastinator.
Interview Yourself About Your Intentions
Throughout the book, Bailey suggests you ponder deeply and reflect honestly on your own motives. Or, to put it another way, you can "interview" yourself to help figure out what's holding you back.
To get a sense of the best way to do that, I asked for help from an expert in "motivational interviewing," which is a form of counseling that I believe ought to be more widely known and used. Elizabeth Barnett, Ph.D., who has spent her career researching, teaching, and using motivational interviewing, agreed to answer this question: Can you use motivational interviewing on yourself and how would you suggest someone begin such a strategy?
I've combined some of Barnett's, Bailey's, and my own insights to offer the following motivation-enhancing pointers.
7 Tips to Help You Finish
1. If you’re a persistent procrastinator, I suggest you begin by giving up the simplistic idea that all you need is willpower. We each have only so much willpower, and using it takes energy.
When I used to offer my dad some leftover snacks (he was someone who could eat two M&Ms or three potato chips), he'd say to me, "What? You have no willpower?" Offering my extra snacks to him was one way I avoided trusting my willpower; another way was never shopping when hungry.
2. You can absolutely use motivational interviewing on yourself, Barnett told me. The key insight, she explained, is to lean into what is called the change talk or the why to change.
When you interview yourself about exercise, for example, try asking open-ended questions about why you want to exercise (connecting it to your values, like health or energy) rather than focusing on the associated difficulties. Include your emotions in this conversation with yourself. Ask: "If you [or I] were exercising consistently, how would that feel in a month?" or "What are the top three reasons you want to be healthier?"
Listen closely to your own answers, as those are your intrinsic motivators. Then, gently explore small, manageable steps forward based on those answers.
3. Some goals and intentions contain aversive, tedious, unpleasant parts, but we can compensate for those, making them more attractive to us. This is where Bailey, Barnett, and my own research and experience lead to a similar suggestion: Make it more likely you’ll enter into a flow state and you'll find you want to keep doing some task.
This may involve exploring ways to raise the challenge just enough to make it more like playing a game. In fact, Bailey writes about ways to “gamify” your actions, and I, too, have found that the right amount of challenge is a real motivator.
4. Your intentions should be deep to make it much more likely you’ll follow through. How connected are your intentions with your deeply held values?
When I was just starting out as a writer, getting published overruled nearly everything else for me. But when one of my early parenting essays that a Southern Baptist magazine bought was changed by the editors to say that my husband and I had prayed for guidance to solve a particular parenting issue—which we most definitely had not—I realized I could no longer write for that publication. Its conflict with my own humanistic values made me too uncomfortable.
5. Remember that we don’t have complete control over what we accomplish. In setting goals, it's important to accept that you will only be able to predict the results of your efforts. Writers and other creatives of many kinds must learn this. You could be doing everything extremely well, and still not reach a goal that depends on others to need or want what you're creating.
6. Be realistic about how many focused hours you have in you. If you believe you have four focused hours to do your deep work, as Bailey does, keep your goals congruent with that. Four may be a lot for some of us, but even with an hour a day, we can achieve a lot over time.
7. At some point, be willing to accept the truth that the goal you've been avoiding working toward isn't realistic for the kind of personality you have, at least at this point in your life. If so, maybe it's time to let yourself off the hook without shame or regret.
References
A few of my previous posts address the challenge of finishing what you start: "5 Ways to Finish What You Start and Why You Often Don’t," "5 Tips for Postponing Procrastination," and "6 Tips for Finishing What You Start"
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