How Do You Manage To Motivate Yourself When You're Feeling Tired Or Depressed?

How do you manage to motivate yourself when you're feeling tired or depressed?

Usually I try to give myself time to rest until those feelings lessen, since they're generally symptomatic of having pushed too hard, but on occasions where tiredness seems to be getting a little too cozy with depression, there's a few things I do.

I've observed in myself a habit of sort of… waiting in a holding pattern for something to push me into action. "Something" isn't defined clearly, but it becomes a real problem on depressed or low-executive-function days. This might just BE what low executive function feels like, tbh; like there's some invisible trigger and I can't Do The Thing until something trips it. When I notice I'm stuck in a holding pattern, I have a few tricks to snap myself out of it:

Flip a coin. Heads I get up and Do The Thing, tails I don't. The simple act of challenging myself is enough to motivate me sometimes, regardless of the outcome, but sometimes this makes me realize that I am legitimately tired, so I stay put and recharge a little until I want to flip for it again.

Set a five- or ten-minute timer and do whatever I need to do until the timer runs out. An artificial deadline can bypass the holding pattern. Sometimes this gives me momentum, and when the timer runs out I keep going. Sometimes this does NOT build momentum, and I crash after the timer runs out - but I crash with five more minutes of progress done. Any progress is better than no progress.

Assume Direct Control. This one only works sometimes, but sometimes it's as simple as breaking down a list of individual units of tangible progress - Get Off Of Bed, Put On Pants, Plug In Tablet, Etc Etc - and just grab the manual controls in my brain and make myself do each thing in turn. Sometimes I'll assume direct control to make myself take a Stupid Mental Health Walk, which has thus far worked every time to improve my mood and energy even though when I am in a Low Mood the last thing I want to do is subject myself to the mortifying ordeal of wearing pants and dealing with people.

I also find that sometimes it's helpful to pull the thread of what you're waiting for. Sometimes I'll realize I've locked myself into a weird paralysis because I've accidentally made something a prerequisite for other tasks. For example, I might realize I'm feeling weirdly frozen and uncomfortable because I haven't taken out the trash, and I've told myself I can't do X Y and Z until the trash is taken out, but I don't want to take out the trash, so I've locked X Y and Z behind Unpleasant Task in a subconscious attempt to motivate myself to Do The Task but instead I've just dramatically reduced the number of things I feel I can do. Often just noticing this pattern is enough to break out of it.

I also find that sometimes the invisible trigger I'm waiting for is just waiting to want to do something. That is unfortunately a trap. There are many things you can enjoy or benefit from without wanting to do them beforehand, because the thought of it is unpleasant or scary or anxiety-inducing or otherwise loaded down with what-ifs and caveats. I will never WANT to have a doctor's appointment, but I feel very good AFTER arranging and going to one. I very rarely WANT to exercise, but after the fact I feel very rewarded and more confident in my abilities. I've only WANTED to go on like a third of the walks I've taken this year, but every single one of them has been pleasant and beneficial to my mental health. Sometimes you just gotta say "I don't WANT to do it, but I'll be glad I did it" and manually pilot yourself into Doing It.

More Posts from The-crabmaster and Others

the-crabmaster

3 months ago

Please tell me your red hilt conspiracy theory. I know very little about the narrative surrounding the sword so I’m curious.

oh my god. okay okay i got into it like a few months ago and that post is so incomprehensible so this time i am going to attempt to not just rant like an insane person.

okay. lets go chronologically through le morte, my main source for this whole thing.

In Book 2 chapter 1, a damsel arrives at court challenging people to draw a sword from a scabbard. They fail and she continues on, meeting Balin on the road, who successfully draws her sword in chapter two, which is summarized thusly:

“Balin, arrayed like a poor knight, pulled out the sword, which afterward was the cause of his death.”

He refuses to return it to the maiden, who warns him that “ye are not wise to keep the sword from me, for ye shall slay with the sword the best friend that ye have, and the man that ye most love in the world, and the sword shall be your destruction.”

Soon, as she predicts, Balin, after doing a whoopsy daisy Dolourous Stroke, kills his brother Balan and is mortally wounded in the same battle. Merlin shows up, buries them both, switches the handle of Balins sword with a red handle, and says:

“there shall never man handle this sword but the best knight of the world, and that shall be Sir Launcelot or else Galahad his son, and Launcelot with this sword shall slay the man that in the world he loved best, that shall be Sir Gawaine“ (book 2 chapter xix)

Then he plunks the sword in a rock and sends it magically floating in the river. Cut to like thirty years later, the rock floats to Camelot, arriving at exactly the same time as Galahad. uh oh galahad!

In the vulgate grail quest, the knights find this rock, and it is first presented to Lancelot, who refuses to attempt to draw the sword. Arthur then asks Gawain, who also initially refuses, but is unable to deny Arthur when he gives him a direct command. Gawain reluctantly attempts to draw the sword and fails, whereupon Lancelot immediately gives him shit for it even though it wasn’t his fault--! he is warned that this will have dire consequences.

whatever. Then, because percival <3 percival tries it, specifically so gawain wont be embarassed at being the only one to fail. i love percival so much. he also fails though. then galahad tries it and succeeds. horay!

(this goes down much the same in le morte, and lancelot says: “My lord Sir Gawaine, said Sir Launcelot, now wit ye well this sword shall touch you so sore that ye shall will ye had never set your hand thereto for the best castle of this realm.” again, not his fault, but go off i guess lancelot)

except not horay. this is where the speculation starts in earnest but:

knights in the grail trio who die on the grail quest: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont die on the grail quest: bors

knights in the grail trio who touch the red hilted sword: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont touch it: bors

ya know??????

anyway so galahad dies and the sword gets passed to lancelot, who uses it to eventually deal a fatal blow to gawain, fulfilling both the prophecy of the sword and the doom gawain earned by attempting to draw it.

conclusion: sword bad. should have kept secace instead. fuck the sword with the red hilt all my homies hate the sword with the red hilt

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the-crabmaster

6 months ago

UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting (4 December 2024)

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting (4 December 2024)

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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the-crabmaster

11 months ago

imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow

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the-crabmaster

11 months ago

I like the magic mad scientist and his big mad scientist goggles.

Also here's a not-animated version

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the-crabmaster

7 months ago

My new favourite archery image!

This painting is located in the Church of the Nativity in Prague, and is dated to 1663. It is also the basis of at least 3 D&D character concepts that are stuck in my head now.

If you want more info, art references, and tutorials, check my Patreon!

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the-crabmaster

2 years ago

“May you have a life of safety and peace”, said the witch, cursing the bloodthirsty warrior.

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the-crabmaster

3 months ago

Modern AU

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the-crabmaster

7 months ago

Idk how to animate but I had this idea lol

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the-crabmaster

2 years ago

More favourite mad science tropes:

Flashy explosions as a result of errors in procedures that have no conceivable reason to involve any explosive substance

Lab coats in non-laboratory settings

All mad scientists being versed in mad psychology regardless of their ostensible mad field of study

“It comes to life and starts eating people” being a potential failure mode of literally every experiment

WIldly unethical ways of accomplishing goal that could have been achieved more easily without the crimes against humanity

[noun] reaction/inversion/overload, where [noun] is something that one would not customarily regard as being capable of reacting/inverting/overloading

The way that you can pinpoint the popular anxieties of the era of the story’s publication by looking at the form factor of the thing that turns people into face-eating monsters (e.g., weird potion versus nuclear radiation versus psychiatric fuckery, etc.)

QuAnTum

World-ending superweapons that are also people even though being a person has no bearing on the world-ending part

“What in God’s name?” “God had nothing to do with it!”

Tags

enrichment for your mad scientist

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the-crabmaster

8 months ago

ARE YOU A BONE OR BLOOD PERSON.

ARE YOU A VOID OR ABYSS PERSON.

ARE YOU A ROT OR DUST PERSON.

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