It's All About Momentum
Key topics
The art of staying motivated is a tricky one, with various commenters weighing in on their personal strategies for maintaining momentum. While some swear by regular breaks and a consistent routine, others point out that everyone's brain operates differently, making it futile to prescribe a one-size-fits-all approach. The discussion highlights the importance of self-awareness, with many commenters agreeing that writing about personal experiences in the first person can be a more effective and relatable way to share insights. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that there's no single "right" way to stay motivated, and that flexibility and adaptability are key to finding what works for each individual.
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Dec 18, 2025 at 5:09 AM EST
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Dec 18, 2025 at 5:53 AM EST
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Dec 18, 2025 at 1:21 PM EST
18 days ago
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If you take the time to slow down, the restorative effects of a good break do kick in. You sleep better. And when the break is over you have a few days/weeks where you might have more energy for stuff.
But the core issue of addressing root causes for stress in your life would make that more of a permanent thing. There are many ways. Meditation is usually singled out as a silver bullet. But there are many other things including eating well, going to bed earlier, exercising, etc. And maybe reflecting a bit on how you deal with work challenges, communication, etc. A lot of stress can result from bad work habits on that front. Those are fixable. I know people that can't deal with deadlines. They worry about them and then when they get close they are unprepared and have to scramble to get shit done. Every time. That's a great example of unnecessary stress. The issue is not that there is no time but poor planning.
Some of that stuff can be organizational. Poorly performing teams cause a lot of pain on their team members. The classic example in software development is "crunch time" which is literally poor planning resulting in some crazy push to get shit down that drives everyone to the point of exhaustion. Some teams even glorify this as the only point of time they shine. Shielding yourself from that kind of stress is hard and might involve having to call out some BS around you or taking the lead yourself. But recognizing that stress is transferable and a bit of an organizational disease is important. There are a lot of dysfunctional workplaces around where this is endemic.
Not all stress is bad. I kind of like a bit of peer pressure and I run a startup. Which is not exactly free of stress. But there's a point where you have to worry if it's worth risking a burn out or other health issues. I'm 51 and I cannot afford to get side lined with a burnout. So managing my own health is mission critical for my company. And treating your own health as such is a good thing in general.
It isn’t the frequency so much as always knowing you have a specific break coming, so when things drag it doesn’t subconsciously feel endless. More a race or push to get what you can done before the break.
Which is much healthier self-generated time-limited “pressure”.
Very true.
But I very much dislike when they phase it as “you need to” or “this is how it works”. Thinking everyone else’s brain operates the way yours does seems to be a frequent bias among bloggers. And managers.
I encourage those who write about their experiences to keep it in the first person.
My therapist gave me this exact criticism our first few sessions. On a more charitable read, writing is as much an exercise for the author as it is for the reader. That you might be the writer talking out loud to themselves, not to you in particular.
In any case, point taken. I will keep that in mind.
I actually find it annoying and actively skip those parts because they can take paragraphs of text or minutes of a video.
At no point in this post did the author assert they knew how your brain worked.
That sweet interruption free early morning slot of ~5 hours when everyone's sleeping is probably the most productive I feel before the hustle bustle of life starts.
I have yet to master how to work better in short bursts of 1-2 hours when I have errands to run or calls to take later in the day. Would love to know if anyone has found techniques that work for them to make the most of such smaller time slots where it's harder to reach flow.
So ultimately, I feel like I've replaced an intolerable amount of notifications with an intolerable amount of application switching.
I acknowledge it's a me problem, of course, but it's still a problem. We are way too peppered with bits of "info" from way too many sources.
Personally I have settled on keeping social media and notifications blocked until 2pm. Much easier than wishing and failing to be a productive machine for the entire day.
It's for work stuff that I have a harder time (because of not entirely rational fear of letting people down by being slow to respond).
Then one day based off someone's comment I bought blackout blinds for my bedroom, the kind you can't even see your hands in front of your face. Overnight I became a morning person. I haven't been able to sleep past 7:30am in almost a decade. My mornings are sacred now.
For me waking up when it's very dark feels much worse than getting to sleep with a bit of light.
If I woke up with the sunrise in winter I'd be waking up 2 hours later than in the summer (3, really, because of daylight saving time).
The time doesn't change by a lot every day, sure, but that's not relevant to things like transportation or work schedules.
Not specific to your comment here, but speaking more generally: I always found it sort of interesting how "morning people" are typically thought of as more productive, less lazy, etc. than "night people". If you say you wake up every morning at 5am people are impressed and assume you are highly motivated, but if you tell people you go to bed at 3am every day people assume you're lazy and maybe depressed. Yet everyone has roughly the same amount of waking hours -- the only thing that should matter is what you're doing with them, not when you have them.
Yes. I've always loved morning time, despite waking up around 11 until my early 30s. I've been told I was lazy, lost a potential job offer because I was always late for work, until one day magically I became one of the "normal" ones :-)
I don't believe night owls to be lazy, variety is the spice of life, but I believe a percentage of them simply have a messed up sleep schedule and no idea how to fix it.
Page seems to have gotten hug of deathed
It's not all about momentum.
It depends a lot on what you do on your holiday. I think it's best to start with something "mind focussing": you're not going to think about your job while skydiving, scuba-diving etc.