Why You Only Get Motivated At Night (And Lose It by Morning)

Where does all that motivation you had at 2:00 a.m. go when you wake up in the morning? You have all the ideas, all the motivation. You’re finally going to get your together. You get so inspired that you start doing push-ups at like midnight. You feel like the main character in the movie when he has this big realization and his life is changed forever now. You think this time it’s actually going to be different. But then the morning comes and you wake up

At 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, maybe even 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. It feels like all that motivation you had from last night meant nothing. Where did it all go? I thought I was going to conquer the world today, but instead I’m waking up at lunchtime and the first thing I do is scroll on my phone for an hour. I was really curious as to why this happens all the time. I feel like it’s easy to just put the

Blame on something else that is not me, you know? I find myself thinking that if I could just consistently go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, then I’ll be okay. I even blame my girlfriend in my head. It’s her fault because she keeps me awake at night, so that’s why I lose my motivation in the morning. And I think that yeah, these are reasonable claims to be making. If I was more

Consistent with my sleep schedule and I just went to bed at the same time every day, then maybe it would be easier for me to wake up at the same time every day. But this doesn’t automatically fix the problem that I’m talking about. And blaming someone else for my own problem is just stupid because there have been times in my life where I haven’t had nearly enough sleep as I should have, but I still wake up on time early and

Force myself out of bed because I feel like I have to. Like when I have a shift at work in the morning where I have plans to meet friends or something, then I’m definitely not just going to stay in bed. But when it comes to doing something that is like my choice, my optional decision, then it just gets pushed later into the day or I just sleep in or just put it off or whatever. I think that being consistent with your

Sleep and wake schedule can contribute to actually helping you achieve your goals, but it still doesn’t explain where all my motivation that I had last night went in the morning when I woke up. And that’s why I think that regardless of anything, regardless of sleep schedule, regardless of girlfriend keeping you awake at night, there’s something else going on here that’s making us forget our 2:00 a.m. motivation when we wake up in the morning. I think a really important

Question to ask is why can I wake up motivated and early for my job or friends, just other people in general, but not for myself? Because I think the answer lies somewhere here. I actually have one more thing that I want to tell you that I’m able to wake up early for, boxing. Recently, I’ve tried to start boxing in the gym close to me because they have a punching bag. But I don’t want to have other people watching me. I

Just want to be totally focused on my technique and power and I don’t want to be thinking about if I look stupid or not, you know? So I make sure to get up a little extra early so that nobody is even there yet besides me. Sometimes one or two people pass through, but that’s still better than having a bunch of people there in my opinion. I’ll wake up at like 6:00 or 6:30 in order to do

This, which might not sound super early to some people, but for me that’s like very not regular and very interesting that I’m able to do that. Because for boxing, I’m not waking up to go meet other people or uphold a responsibility for someone else. It’s just for me. I want to box and I want to be focused. And yeah, you could argue that I am still getting up early for other people so that I can avoid them. And that could

Honestly be true, but I just think that there’s something else going on here. I was genuinely curious why this keeps happening to me. So I researched it and I learned some actually really interesting things. The reason you feel motivated at night but lose it in the morning is mainly because at night change feels easy because you’re only imagining the reward. In the morning, motivation disappears because now you have to confront the effort, ambiguity, and friction required to actually make

It real. It’s fun to think of ideas when you don’t have to do them until later. When you’re close to going to bed, you give yourself permission to just get it done tomorrow. This mentality frees up your mind to think of ideas without giving any thought as to how to actually execute those ideas. You stop worrying as much as you would during the day about work, effort, and obstacles involved. And you start to just freely think about all the possibilities out

There. And it’s a ton of fun to imagine these things. People are usually more relaxed at night because the day is done now. So all the troubles of today don’t matter anymore because you’re just going to sleep soon anyway. Even if you didn’t get all your responsibilities from today done, it’s like now you can tell yourself without feeling bad like ah, it’s too late now. I’ll I’ll just get it done tomorrow. Instead of focusing on all those daily chores that occupy your

Mind during the day, you can spend more time now focusing on the things that like you want to get done tomorrow. You get pumped about it. You you imagining the stuff that’s coming tomorrow, but it’s not certain, but you’re still imagining what could be tomorrow. And then it becomes a battle between your present self and your future self. Your present self is dreaming and fantasizing about all these big amazing things that could happen tomorrow, but it

Isn’t considering that your future self is actually going to have to do all that work. Your present self doesn’t care because it won’t have to worry about that version of you for a long time. It just gets the fun of coming up with all these cool plans. So there’s no need to take into consideration the ridiculous amount of work that you’re going to make your future self do because it’s not happening right now. And most people end

Up favoring their present self over their future self. And they end up planning way more than they can handle. And all this planning overwhelms who you are when you wake up in the morning because you had all this stuff you wanted to do, but now reality kicks in and you realize that actually it might be a lot of work. And then you feel bad about yourself for not doing everything you said you wanted to do the

Night before. It’s one thing to say you’re going to do something, but it’s another thing to actually do it. Let’s say the night before you have all these big plans. Tomorrow I’m going to study, meditate, clean my room, work out, do some work, start a business, learn how to cook, read a book. But then you wake up the next morning and realize how unrealistic getting all those plans done in the same day is. And once you get

Overwhelmed, all your motivation goes out the window. You like the idea of the plan, but not all the small details. When you’re thinking about your plans in the nighttime, you’re probably not super specific on the details. And because you aren’t thinking closely about the particular steps involved, the idea often seems more doable than it really is. And once you realize how hard something really is, you procrastinate or give it up entirely. The night before, you just thought about the

Awesome outcomes of the idea, but not about all the details of everything you would have to do to pull it off. It’s like you want to beat the boss in Dark Souls, but then you don’t realize that you’re going to have to level up your character more than you are right now and level up your weapons and go get a better armor set because you can’t handle it the way that you’re prepared right now. And you wanted to fight the

Boss, but now that you’re thinking about all these things you’re going to have to do, now you get demotivated and you just want to kind of maybe you set the game down and play it again another time because I don’t feel like doing all that. Right now, you get demotivated. But if the reason you feel motivated at night but lose it in the morning is because now you have to confront the effort, ambiguity, and friction required

To actually make it real, then why can we still do things like get up for friends or work or boxing with still a lot of motivation? Shouldn’t all of our motivation be gone then? Why can it happen sometimes? Well, like I was saying before, I think the answer lies somewhere in the reason why you can get up to go see your friends or go to work or go to boxing in the morning without issue. What do boxing and friends and

Work have in common? You might say people are a variable. You don’t want to be late to see your friends. You don’t want to be late to work or else there might be a punishment. And you want a box. But if there are people around watching you, then you don’t want to do it. So the issue is just people then. All right, problem solved. Well, maybe not. If you think about it, all of these things, going to work, seeing your

Friends, boxing, all have something else in common that you don’t have to think about it too much in order to execute it. Let me explain. I think a big part of why you might not be as productive as you think you can be is because when you wake up first thing in the morning, you are your most stupid. Like as soon as you wake up, you’re an idiot. Have you ever had someone try to talk to you as soon as you wake up and

It sounds like they’re not even saying human words? Yeah, you’re stupid at that point in the morning. And so if you don’t already know exactly what you need to do for your goal in the morning, then you’ll just be lazy and decide that you’re not motivated. When you actually don’t need motivation, what you need is clarity. If your goal is to go see your friends, even if it’s super early in the morning, then you don’t really have to

Think about anything other than just getting ready and going to see your friends. Same thing as a shift at work. You don’t need to think about it. You just need to go get dressed and go. That’s all. And believe it or not, it’s the same thing for boxing. You just get what you need, your boxing wraps and stuff, and then go and then do your thing. And then while you’re on your way to go to whatever place you’re going,

Then you start to actually wake up and realize the actual steps you’ll need to take once you get there. So it’s a combination of clarity and planning and even environment and also momentum because when you wake up and you’re stupid, but you still manage to do that first thing, then it takes you forward more on that path you’re going. Now if we look at things from a different perspective, like for example, working on some math homework first thing in the

Morning, we can fantasize all we want in the nighttime that we’ll get all our math done and we’ll become experts so that we can destroy our upcoming test or something. But when we wake up in the morning, that motivation is gone. And we sure as don’t want to do any math, right? But what if you replicated for math the same kinds of things that happen when you go see your friends or go to your job or go boxing. The first

Step needs to be stupidly obvious. If your 2:00 a.m. goal is vague, something like become a math expert, then you need to turn the goal into something real, something tangible. If you want to work on math, then the first stupidly obvious thing you should do to get the momentum going is to just pick a specific time when you’ll wake up and sit at your desk. At 7:30, I sit at my desk with the notebook already open and do question

One. Or when I wake up at 6:00, I’ll get my gym clothes on and go to the gym. You don’t even have to think about anything else. You just think about doing that first step and then let the rest take care of itself once you actually get there. Getting up early and working without motivation becomes a lot easier when you don’t have to ask so many questions. You can just get up and start. You just have to do the first

Thing. Then the momentum will already be started and you’ll wake up and realize that you can actually do this and you don’t need to rely on motivation. Each sub goal also needs to be clear for you and actually doable because without clarity, the goal can become overwhelming again. Like if you say you’ll study math in the morning, that makes things more ambiguous and will allow you to just put it off like you always do. Instead, say you’ll study

Math for 20 minutes at 7:00 a.m. to make it more clear and specific. Don’t let your goals be general if you actually want to do them. And what’s the point of having a million plans if you never actually follow through with them? You’re better off prioritizing your goals and focusing on one thing at a time. This will also help prevent you from getting overwhelmed when you wake up in the morning. Motivation is unreliable. You can’t hack it so that

You’re more motivated all the time. There are going to be days when you’re demotivated. You can’t stop it. But if you instead focus on forming habits, you’ll find yourself getting things done even when you aren’t motivated. Things will simply start to become part of your routine and then you won’t have to worry about being motivated in the morning at all since you’ll just do the things you need to do out of habit. You don’t have to willpower your way through change.

Just make it more convenient for yourself to do things differently. Maybe your 2:00 a.m. motivation was real, but you just needed to give yourself that clarity that you needed to actually act on your goals. You don’t need motivation, you need clarity. If you like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a new free community that you can join. It’s just going to be the link in the description. I also have a new course that’s like how to genuinely fix

Your life but explained with Dark Souls. So if that sounds interesting to you, then that’s also going to be a link in the description, all right? No pressure for either of them, but just if that sounds interesting to you, if community of people who are similar to you sounds interesting to you, or you want to fix your life genuinely and you like the the explanation of Dark Souls behind it, then I would recommend it very highly

And so would I think a lot of people in my community already. So no pressure, but just check it out if it sounds interesting to you, all right? You take care, guys. Don’t you dare go hollow.