I don't know about you, but I really struggle with being productive—whether for writing, working, exercising, drawing, or even making stuff that's supposed to be fun for me. I think about it all the time: Why is it so hard for me to focus on this thing I really want to do?

I've tried all the "productivity tricks," and they help sometimes, but making myself do a thing still feels like I'm shoving myself through molasses. But a recent Hank Green video got me thinking about productivity from a different angle. Instead of "Why aren't I better at making myself do things?" I started asking, "What is it about certain things that motivates me to do them?"

Because there are times I am extremely productive. I poured hours into Torment. I drafted Izanami's Choice in a couple of months. Heck, I just wrote a whole publishable Cypher adventure in a week that was otherwise filled with tourism and anxiety. And while there were certainly elements of self-discipline in those things, I also felt a strong motivation that made it so I wasn't fighting with myself like stormtroopers and Ewoks.

Hank suggests (and I agree) that the motivating factor is that those things mattered to me. But why? And more importantly, how do I reproduce that when there's something I want to do but am struggling to make happen?

So, I scienced it. I sat down and made a list of everything I've done with relatively high discipline and low struggle, hoping to find a common thread. It turns out there were four very consistent elements. When I am motivated, I feel Desire, Importance, Confidence, and Enthusiasm.

Or (for your convenience and mine), DICE:

Desire is usually the reason I want to do the thing in the first place. I want to create something or change something or become something. I want it because it supports the life I want to create.

Importance comes from my core fear of letting people down. That fear, as terrible as it is sometimes, serves a purpose. If I believe what I'm doing is important to someone—whether I'm trying to help people or I made a promise to somebody or my family needs money or whatever—I will force myself through all kinds of struggles to make it happen.

Confidence is the one I struggle the most with. It's taken me a lot of time, therapy, and hard inner work to trust that I'm actually good at things. But when I believe this about myself, I'm suddenly much more motivated to do those things.

Enthusiasm is usually (but not always) the easiest of the four. If I like doing a thing, I'm more motivated to do it. Even when I don't like every aspect of a thing (exercising sucks, y'all), I can often find or create some part to be excited about (like listening to Critical Role while I'm running).

Now, this may seem like a kind of reverse ikigai, and I guess it is. But the thing that always bugged me about ikigai is trying to find purpose in something that nobody would pay me for—or that maybe somebody might pay me for if I kept at it. The requirements above work around that problem, and they speak specifically to me.

So, I also made a list of all the times I struggle with self-discipline (spoiler: it's a lot), and it turns out these all had two things in common as well:

Fear that nobody wants it.Fear that I can't do it.Basically the opposite of importance and confidence. In hindsight, I should not have been surprised.
But identifying these fears is quite useful. When I find myself struggling to focus, I can say to myself, "Hey, people out there want this!" or "You know how to do this!" and it targets the offending blockage like a proton torpedo at an unsecured thermal exhaust port.

Or, wait... Does that mean I explode?

Anyway, what about you? What do you do when you struggle with motivation?