How to quickly get out of a rut

so pretend you're this guy and you were really productive earlier the month in fact you are kind of killing it you're reading lots of books hitting the gym consistently and actually getting your work in on time but then something happened maybe you woke up on the wrong side of the bed maybe an invisible demon ghost violated you in your sleep whatever the case may be everything seems just a bit harder to do you're tired you've lost all the motivation you had to keep being awesome and you can't even remember why you were being productive in

the first place and that mental clarity that you seem to be the beneficiary of just yesterday seems to have ran away in the night and unfortunately this lack of motivation starts to seep into the other areas of your life the thought dawns on you to go to the gym and you're too lazy to do it so you skip the gym that day one day turns into two days two days turns into a week you're also starting to buy more junk food watch more TV play more video games and not only are you not doing the

things you know you should be doing but you don't even want to you can't even remember why you were being productive in the first place why are we still here for a lot of people these long periods of success followed by long periods of self-destruction and failure seem to be a common pattern and while this issue is a deep psychological issue that I'll dive into in a later video I wanted to give you guys a more practical guide as to how I get myself out of these type of pseudo depressive ruts and start being productive

again now before we dive into these really powerful strategies I just want to preface the video with a couple things number one is that this video is not meant to be a replacement for going to therapy if you actually have clinical depression I'm not a doctor I'm just a dude and I talk about what works for me second of all even though this video is about how to get out of a rut efficiently or quickly that's all relative you're usually not going to get out of a rut overnight okay so strategy number one is to

utilize the dosomething principle this principle is the catalyst for action if you don't have the motivation to do something you need something that'll spark some sort of action something to get the momentum going something to get the ball rolling and to do something principle is a means to take action when you don't have the motivation to do anything so most people think that in order to take action on anything you need to be motivated to do that and motivation comes when you're inspired by something so for instance say you're browsing reddit or something and you

come across a Matt D Avella video and by the end he says something that strikes a chord with you and you're inspired to take action that inspiration served as the adequate motivation to take action on your goals but the dosomething principle dictates that inspiration motivation action is not a linear sequence it's an endless loop and you can start wherever you want to start so it's far more efficient to start with action and let that action become the inspiration and the motivation necessary to take further action so you may be thinking thanks genius if I'm unmotivated

to do something then I should just do something that's really helpful but you actually take action without motivation all the time do you need some sort of huge inspirational epiphany to take a shower no it's just something you do these monotonous actions are the very actions you should be using as momentum to take further action if you're just sitting there waiting for inspiration to strike you go brush your teeth brushing your teeth is a little constructive action that will give you momentum into taking further action if you have to write a giant essay don't think

to yourself oh I have to go and write my giant four thousand word essay just say I'm gonna open up the word doc write whatever comes to my mind for one minute and that's it that's all I have to do but once you start writing you will tend to want to write more because you've convinced yourself to get there that is in essence to do something principled now strategy number two seems counterintuitive to what I just said and that is to reward yourself for small wins now if you follow this channel at all I am

NOT a pat yourself on the back and everyone gets an award kind of guy so if you're in the same boat you might cringe at the thought of rewarding yourself for taking a shower or something like that because you know you're capable of so much more but the need to reward yourself for small wins especially if you're in a vulnerable situation is a psychological necessity and it has everything to do with the fact that you have basically two a brain and I'm not talking about right and left I'm talking more about the more primal part

of your brain which is closer to the stem which is responsible for motivation and emotion and stuff like that and you're more logical abstract moralistic part of your brain which is present more in the prefrontal cortex so if your prefrontal cortex knows to use the do something principle in order to convince but here a primal side of your brain to take action on something it's important that you're not to iron-fisted with this because it's a negotiation with yourself don't be a slave driver to the primal side of your brain or your primal side of your

brain won't feel listened to it'll lash out and it won't want to do anything that your logical side of your brain wants it to do so you almost need to use your higher judgment to provide compassionate guidance to the primal part of your brain and very gradually win it over if you're too lazy to pretty much do anything other than sit around all day and you use the do something principle to convince your primal side of your brain to brush your teeth take a shower get some nice clothes on and clean your kitchen and you

start to get really tired and agitated after this take a break it may sound suspect and your logical side of your brain knows that you should be doing a lot more than that just take it easy reward yourself for doing something constructive for once after days of binging dopamine and just relax and have a good time so you might be thinking how the heck am I supposed to get out of a rut if I don't ride this momentum out into the sunset that's what tip number three is all about so strategy number three is all

about progressive overload it's very similar to the philosophy of lifting weights and getting stronger instead of yo-yoing between taking crazy amounts of action and then your primal brain lashing out and going into long periods of self-destruction you should be massaging yourself into organically growing a lifestyle that you gradually get used to that's more and more productive and you do more and more every day while rewarding yourself for the small wins and comparing yourself to who you were yesterday rather than who someone else is today so for instance if you develop a game plan over the

course of seven days to get out of a riot that's a lot more realistic than just trying to be productive all of a sudden so say day one you can't really do much other than go on the internet for long periods of time on this day if you convince yourself to take pretty much any sort of constructive action that should be sufficient for the day day one should just be about gradually taking a little bit more action and being happy with that and the next day remind yourself that that wasn't so bad and actually felt

pretty good to take action and try to do a little bit more and if you do this day after day then gradually and organically both sides of your brain will be in agreeance and you'll very comfortably start to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and become the person that you were earlier in that month I can't stress how important this is managing expectations being patient with yourself and letting your higher faculties be very communicative with the more primal and emotional sides of your brain this synergy between both sides of your brain is integral for

maintaining long-term success and you can eventually be very reliably and sustainably living the kind of life that you've always wanted to be living I want to give a huge shout out to Skillshare for sponsoring this video for those of you who don't know Skillshare is an online learning platform which has thousands of classes covering dozens of entrepreneurial productivity and artistic topics it's also extremely affordable with an annual membership it comes in at less than $10 a month I just finished watching my friend Thomas Frank's productivity master class on Skillshare taking Thomas Frank's productivity master class

helped me realize that one of the most important ways I can stay in that sustained productivity lifestyle is to reduce the amount of friction there is to actually being productive a lot of this can be achieved by creating a reliable streamlined productivity system that helps you get things done without the headache because Skillshare is sponsoring this video they're offering you guys the better ideas viewers a two-month free trial which means for two months absolutely free you get unlimited access to every single class on Skillshare so right now you can check out Thomas Frank's productivity course

for free using the link in the description and while you're at it you might as well check out all the other classes on there as well thanks again Skillshare for sponsoring this video if you like this video make sure to hit like because when you like it the algorithm blesses me with shoving this video in front of people's faces helping them out this will be especially helpful if somebody's in a rut and because you liked this video it ended up in their subscription and this video was able to help them climb out of the rut

I'd love to hear your guys's thoughts on how you climb out of ruts everyone has their own little strategies that helps them get momentum back into their life so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you're lurking here consider subscribing and hitting the bell icons so you don't miss videos like these in the future tons of amazing stuff happening on the channel you're probably noticing that there's more sponsor videos this allows me to put more effort into the videos because I spend less and less almost no time now doing freelance videography so I

can rededicate that time to making amazing content for you guys but yeah that's all for today thank you for watching and we'll catch you in the next video [Music]