Transcript
Where’s the pill? There’s a pill, right? The magic motivation pill. There’s gotta be one right? There’s a pill for everything.
Of course there ain’t no magic pill for motivation. And no, Adderall does not count.
Life is hard and people make more money selling “how to write books” than writing books about great stories.
I’m gonna save you some ducats right here, right now. This entire section of books boils down to exactly two sentences. Sit down. Start writing.
That’s it! Feel free to send any extra ducats I’ve saved you my way. I’ll put ‘em to good use.
All right, enough of that. Let’s talk about motivation. Or the lack thereof.
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we sometimes stop beating around the bush and just face facts, as brutal as they may be.
And we never forget to thank our patrons, from whom a little goes a long way on this side of the screen.
Okay, strap in, we fixing to get ugly in this one.
Let’s get one simple fact straight: you ain’t gonna get motivated. There, I said it. You say it too. Feel better? Like a weight’s been lifted? Same here.
We really wanna be motivated. We really wanna do all the things. We don’t wanna be “that couch potato”. But if we ain’t motivated, how we gonna stuff done? Face it. We’re not.
So, let’s start with a disclaimer: I can only approach this topic from a self-generated anecdotal experience. Meaning, this is just my own perspective, so, you know, take that for what it’s worth. Which is probably nothing. That disclaimer should be heavily implied on all my videos.
But there’s always gonna be folks like David Goggins. And folks who tell you to just watch David Goggins.
For me, my lack of motivation started to manifest after I hit my mid-40s. Don’t act surprised, my cinematic references obviously belie my deceptively young look.
The truth is, I had never felt unmotivated or true depression until a few years ago, you know, when life caught up with me in a number of gnarly ways. And I’ll tell you what – it was surprising. Dare I say, eye-opening.
But depression – even though it definitely fosters a lack of motivation – is a whole other topic with a billion youtube channels to explore and learn from or even just relate to. Which is all you might be able to do when you’re depressed, find someone to relate to or share it with. Anyway, if you need help with depression, there are legitimate resources just a few Google clicks away. Just keep in mind that the fixing of depression comes from inside and not outside. But external help can help get the internal workings working.
Today though we’re just gonna talk about motivation, or the lack thereof.
Tabletop Alchemy – where we treat the symptoms and never the cause. Cause we’re in the US. Duh.
All right, enough sidebars. As hobbyists, there are these things we wanna do. Not only do we wanna do them, we LIKE doing them. But as we know, “doing” things expends energy. And for one reason or another, we often find excuses NOT to expend energy. Part of it’s, no doubt, just simple animal nature we’re fighting against. And some folks seem to just have been born with more internal drive than others. I think this is also part of why “collecting” afflicts a lot of us in a maybe not-so-good way.
Simply buying something gives us a dopamine hit. It feels like “free drugs” even though we conveniently don’t think about how we’re trading ducats for these micro-doses. Don’t we all wanna live in Colorado with the special mushroom stores? And like most recreational pharmaceuticals, the particular micro-dose from purchasing things – or “collecting” as we call it – is fleeting and kinda without value. You know, like eating Wonder bread. Oh, the days of empty calories.
Eating all that Dolly Madison, I used to get the Dolly Madison cinnamon rolls and squish them up into a ball and eat the ball of dough and sugar. Apologies for how gross that sounds. Man, it was good!
Now we all know deep down that the dopamine hits from buying things is far inferior to the dopamine we generate from within when we work on or finish a personal project. But we also know deep down how working on a project requires effort. Sometimes working on a project requires downright pain-in-the-ass work. Which was in the title, so we should have known.
Warning: silly metaphor ahead.
Let’s say you’re standing in a field with a shiny new shovel you just bought at the hardware store and you’ve set yourself the task of moving a mountain cause it’s blocking your view of the beach. If you just look at the mountain, the mountain is going to crush you with the sheer enormity of the task ahead. The only way you’re gonna move that thing is if you stare at the ground and concentrate on one shovel of dirt at a time.
Now, nothings ever gonna be 100% relatable by 100% of people, so you know, you might have to work with me here a bit, but here’s my singular piece of advice.
The next time you’re thinking about working on something, let’s say writing a dnd adventure or painting up a kill team for … Kill Team. Instead of thinking about the project at all, just set for yourself one very specific task. Just …. sit in the chair.
That’s it. Just tell yourself all you gotta do is sit. In the chair. You ain’t thinking about all the stuff you gotta do, you ain’t thinking about all the stuff you wanna do, all you’re doing is looking at a chair. And then sitting in it.
Sitting in a chair is easy, right? Yes, that’s a dumb question, of course it’s easy. We do it every day. Sometimes for way way way longer than we should. But in this particular instance, sitting in the chair is a good thing.
I think it’s safe to say that sitting in a chair is a vastly more achievable goal than … pretty much anything else. I know I can do it! I have full confidence in myself about at least one thing in life. Sitting in chairs. I bet you can sit in a chair too.
Now I’m also confidant you’re sitting in your chair right now scoffing at my dumb idea. Maybe some more than others, but I can sense the scoffing. But here’s the flip side of this coin, or the other shoe dropping, as the case may be. And it’s the answer to every self-help book, video, podcast, how do I get off my ass and do something piece of advice media that’s out there:
Brute force.
That’s it. On one side of the coin, sit in the chair. On the other side of the coin, brute force.
Do you detect a bit of malicious grin floating around behind the scenes? Perhaps.
But this is honestly what my own personal life experience has taught me. And yeah, it taught it to me the hard way. Do any of us learn anything the easy way? If so, I’ll buy your book.
We all want the diet pill. I’m no different. If there was a magic pill that fixed all my issues without any side effects or addictive properties, I’d be first in line at the dispensary. But we all know the category. Diet pills, pyramid schemes, getting something for nothing, if it sounds too good to be true, we know it is.
Brute force is how you get motivated. Actually it’s not even how you get motivated. Motivation is just an ephemeral descriptor of some intangible feeling. Brute force of will power is how we get stuff done. It’s one of the most important character stats in this game we’re all playing.
Now, I do do a couple other things to help me facilitate the brow-beating of my own willpower. For painting or crafting projects, I make sure the hobby desk is pre-set, ready to go. Everything I think I’ll need is already on it or within easy reach. I might do this days before I actually sit in the chair. And I mean the chair not in front of the tv.
Now, I understand some folks may not have the luxury of being able to leave their setup … set up. And you, my friends, have a tougher situation to overcome. But if you do, you’re benching way more psychic weight than I am and your mental pecs are gonna be a lot more impressive in the long run.
For something like writing where I’m just using a computer, well, that’s always ready to go, so I don’t need to put any prep work into that kind of setup. Neither do you. It’s just us and that damn chair.
If I sit in the chair, I’m 99% guaranteed to get something beyond sitting in the chair accomplished. It might only be typing out one line or putting a single color on a model. Whatever it is, it’s very very rare that I if sit in the chair that I’ll get up again without doing anything at all in between. So I know that every time I sit in the chair, I’m digging out at least one shovel full of dirt from that mountain I refuse to look at. And one day that mountain’s gonna be gone and I’ll be able to see the beach. What a ridiculous metaphor.
Anyway, you know what’s coming. Go sit in the chair.
Good luck and god speed.
See ya!