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The deadliest thing of all isn't to do bad things, it's to do nothing at all. If you do wrong you can always learn from it and redirect yourself, but if you do nothing you won't ever get to that point. In this reality, you can either do things or not do things, and it's 100% up to you. And if you want to make it easier for yourself to do things, it seems to come down to two things:
- Doing what you intrinsically enjoy
- Having a greater purpose
What these two have in common is that they are what you have unlimited (almost...) energy for doing regardless of what happens outside of you. They're what you do when nobody sees you. Meaning that they have no connection to your need for confirmation and attention, your lust for fame, your social life, or your internal pressure and anxiety. That's why you have almost unlimited energy for them - because they don't have all that around-stuff that weighs it down. You could also give all this "around-stuff" another name: Results. Confirmation, attention, fame, social approval, money, these are all results you could or could not want, and your internal pressure and anxiety are the feelings worrying about if you'll get them or not. All this is pretty meaningless and takes unnecessary time and energy.
After all, you can't control the results, you can only control what you do. That's why doing something while thinking about the results takes so much energy and leaves you unsatisfied and exhausted, because you put energy on thoughts of wanting and needing something you can't control either way. If you just focus on what you do, you put focus on what you actually control.
If you intrinsically enjoy something, you do it not for the result but for the actual process of doing. Having a greater purpose in life on the other hand is about striving towards a goal, but it's all about creating results in the world outside of you. Having a real purpose that's greater than yourself somehow gets you back to the process and out of your unnecessary anxiety and worries. If someone in your family needed help you'd probably quickly understand what's a waste of time and what's important and easily make the right decision. You would have almost unlimited energy to both filter away unnecessary obstacles and to withstand necessary obstacles. When you intrinsically enjoy doing something you forget about obstacles, but when you're doing something for a greater cause it doesn't matter if the obstacles are there or not and if you forget about them or need to handle them, you do what you can anyway. Intrinsic enjoyment gets you energized, while working for a greater purpose may do the same, but it could also drain you completely, but it would somehow still be worth it to continue. How this works is unclear, but the body seems to be able to do almost anything if you give it a good enough reason.
To find these two forces, just wait and see what you do when you have time for yourself and no one sees you (no, not that thing). And also wait for your own thoughts and desires to slowly drift away. Stop thinking about the future and the past. Stop planning and deciding. What are you drawn towards naturally? I guess that between all those things you have to do (work etc), and all those things you believe you need to do, and all those things others want you to do, things just happened without any planning or forcing yourself. For me personally, those things are writing about ideas like this, creating things, and traveling to new places. I've never had a plan set out for doing those things, it has just happened naturally through all my life in between all other parts of life, and I don't really know how. That's probably where your intrinsic enjoyment lies, and maybe where your greater purpose lies too. If you enjoy something you'll do it a lot, which will make you better at it, and that's where great purpose can be found - where you can use your unique knowledge in a way others can't. That's where you're needed. Where what you like doing, what you care about, what you're good at and where you happen to be intersect. Since having this kind of drive and motivation lets you spend less energy on doing something, chances are you're already doing that thing automatically, because it's so easy for you. Just be honest with yourself and let go of all the "but's" ("but I need to do that other thing for financial reasons!", "but I want to like doing that other thing!", etc). Look for those things you can do how much you feel like, and how little you feel like, where neither procrastination nor pressure (which are two forms of the same thing) exist.
You can also train yourself to do things without results. Start doing things without looking at the reactions. Put something out there, and don't check for comments and likes. Say something nice to someone, and try to not be phased by the happiness or non-happiness of that person. Don't try to win anything for doing something. It's hard to get rid of this part of life, because we're taught to win and succeed. If you try to do something without caring about the reactions, but you still get angry and frustrated if you get the "wrong" reactions, maybe you weren't doing something you really enjoyed intrinsically. So then go back and try again with something else. If you truly enjoy something intrinsically you won't get angry with any results. And since you have almost unlimited energy to do what you enjoy intrinsically, why not spend all your time on such things? Following this logic, the results automatically become uninteresting. Because how fun is success compared to doing something that always feels easy and natural? Maybe that's what success actually is. However, be thankful if great results come, but don't long for them.
When using this method, I sometimes catch myself thinking like "Perfect, I've found a method for doing things without attachment to the results. This will definitely lead to great results!" And then I'm suddenly attached again. If you end up always going back to the results, the satisfaction, the reward, maybe you don't intrinsically enjoy it or feel a greater purpose, but are just trying to trick yourself. You shouldn't use your passion to get something in the end, the passion is the end goal. There is no way around it. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself: Do you enjoy it or not? Do you care about it or not? If you saw yourself from the outside, would you think the person you saw (=yourself) was true to their passions or tried to do something to get an advantage? I can't stress it enough: Be honest!
If you have a motivation based on the process instead of the results, it will be easier to handle negative emotions. Because the goal isn't to get positive reactions from other people or to feel good and do good things always. You'll be able to see other people's opinion as pure information and not get too emotionally affected by them, because your focus is on the process of learning and getting better, for the sake of it or to contribute something to the world, not on getting acceptance and liking. You won't cater to what people want from you, because the goal isn't to be accepted, and you won't be angry and give up when you get criticism, of the same reason. You'll be able to better see through your own self-criticism and take breaks to clear your mind, because meeting a deadline or meeting a quality bar isn't the goal. In fact, there is no goal, you're just doing the thing.
Western societies teach you to "win", and that to do that you have to fight against other people's reactions and criticism of you. But if you don't even try to win and let go of the idea that winning even is in your control, you don't even have to fight anything. When you don't need to win anything, no one can be against you.
Then: Take the first step. People often want to figure out how to do things before starting, but it's the other way around that actually works... So, just take the first step. Do as little as you can, as long as it's something, so it doesn't go the other way and you get overwhelmed. It doesn't matter what you do or how you do it, you should just do something. After that you'll know a little bit more about what to do next. With enough experience you'll eventually be able to plan ahead and see around the corner, prevent mistakes and take opportunities. You need to be realistic and practical to achieve what you want to achieve, but for that you need experience, and you'll get that from taking action and not from thinking about maybe doing something at some time.
If you're sitting around asking yourself what's the right thing to do, you're not taking action. You're probably putting more energy into not starting right now than you would do actually starting it. So let go of the resistance, don't be afraid, and see what happens. It's not hard to start as long as you stop overthinking and actually like what you do.
And if you don't know what you like or care about, just doing something lets you try new things out and eventually find your thing. When you just do anything, you'll suddenly find just what you were looking for. Even if you don't know what you were looking for. Sometimes after only a minute. It felt so difficult to get going, when you don't know what you want, but simply taking a step led you very far. At least it is like this for me. Doing just about anything is sometimes extremely effective, much more effective than trying to do something good or correct, because the latter takes time and could easily lead to nothing. As you see, doing is always better than not doing, which is the whole point of this text.
Experience will also in the end give you better judgement for the creative and intuitive parts of your process. This is also knowledge you can't get from others, because no one else knows how your thing should be done (after all, it's your thing!), and it's also hard to get this knowledge from just thinking things through before you've even done anything. Just take action in what you feel good about doing until you're good enough to have skills and intuition in your own domain. If you're bothered by your own pre-conceived notions or other people's advice on what you should or shouldn't do, actual experience from taking actual action is also the antidote. There are lots of ideas out in the world, that may have taken place in your mind, about what's reasonable and not to do. Peer pressure and social conformity. As soon as you start and learn from real experience you'll understand how the knowledge you get from actual experience means more than what other people are saying, and you'll be able to filter out which people know their thing and who are just talking nonetheless without knowing anything.
You sometimes need that first push to get out of your comfort zone, but if you have an intrinsic and purposeful motivation where you automatically fall back into that thing because it's just naturally for you to do so, you don't need much more habit or discipline. If you actually have the right motivation and don't do it for anyone else or for results, you'll probably continue with it. Maybe you need that push again now and then when you fall back into the comfort zone. But if you've REALLY found your thing, doing that thing _is_ the comfort zone. A lot of the productivity advice out there assumes that you don't really like what you're doing and therefore have to push through in some way. That's a lot of unnecessary energy spent on the act of forcing instead of on doing the actual thing. Forcing yourself is also unsustainable and will make you quit as soon as the discipline disappears.
I'm not naive and believe this post will change you. Change doesn't come from getting new information, it comes from an emotion inside of you. Even if I've laid out how you practically can find a better motivation for doing things, if you don't want to change you won't change. Kids do as their parents do and not as they say, so maybe I should instead hope that the amount of intrinsic and purposeful time I've laid on writing this post shines through and that it inspires you to feel like doing something yourself, regardless of if you've taken my message to heart or not. Maybe my work in the end will inspire you to stop thinking about doing and talking about doing, and instead just do.
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