**Introduction. This part is tl;dr and details how I've come to the conclusions I've come to. You can skip this if you don't care, go to the next bold line.**

All my life since I could think philosophically I have been burdened with a question. The origin of this question is a simple line of reasoning: to act logically, everything I do should be for a reason. So which are the reasons I should be doing anything I do, am going to do, "ought" to do?

Most of these reasons tend to ultimately fall on a recursion to infinity. I do this because I want that, which I want because of that, which I want because of this etc. . That is not a satisfying answer. You need to introduce a few axioms here. A few of these axioms are grounded in the fact that we are animals with survival instincts: I eat, drink and generally take care of myself because I am biologically programmed to survive. The same could be said for a host of other things that ultimately enable me to function as a healthy member of the social species known as humanity. This kinda solves the problem from a purely formal point, but it doesn't say anything about why I, as a thinking individual, should choose to do those things that keep me alive. Why not choose death? in and on itself, the answer is not obvious at all: if one has literally no reason to live, death might seem like a potential choice. It might be argued that one ought to stay alive anyway because you might eventually find some motivation, and this is true, but it's still not satisfying: you should stay alive so as to keep that door open? kinda sucks in terms of perspective, doesn't it?

So, like I said, I have literally spent most of my life with a mild, background sense of meaninglessness. Nothing I did had any more motivation than immediate satisfaction based on my primal and social instincts or simple self-preservation. Good grades (which I had), friends, sports...everything was a function of the fact that they gave me some sort of gratification rooted in my human programming. Again, this was not satisfying from a philosophical point of view.

One with such interests thus finds out very soon about the culture of motivation. Apart from courage wolf, which is relatively recent (and plenty funny), there have always been motivational sentences, movies, music, even books (including some awesome ancient philosophy), but none of this truly seems to be concerned with anything but willpower.

Willpower, the concept I couldn't wrap my logical, systematic mind around. Willpower is an ill-defined object which springs up from the void, with no reason to exist except the notion that something out the be done. For quite a while I thought willpower, sometimes masqueraded as other concepts such as duty, was the answer. Since there clearly is no meaning in the universe beside that which we arbitrarily give, willpower, birthed out of non-logic, must be the answer, however counter-intuitive that feels.

I don't think that anymore.

**The actual text**

Willpower is bullshit. Willpower is an abdication of reason in favor of results. Willpower is not an answer, it's giving up on trying to find the answer. "Just do it" (in the motivational sense) is bullshit. It's akin to faith: do it, because you should. It might work a few times, powered by some sort of emotional event (even just a video), but it goes away pretty soon as the primary reason why you embraced the "just do it" mantra wears off.

The truth is that to get motivation you must find the reasons why you wanna do shit, i.e. you must find out what you actually want. And, not surprisingly if you think about it, most times people do the wrong things with respect to what they want.

Let's take fitness, for example, which is the most common topic in motivational culture. Why do you go to the gym?

No, seriously, why? do you wanna get ripped? do you *actually* want to get ripped? because I advance that most people actually don't. Most people want the stuff that comes *with* being ripped: chicks, respect, self-respect. If they could get the same stuff with a magic pill they would.

Well if you are this sort of person (and there is absolutely nothing wrong in this, and I've been like this), then the gym is not your best answer. Sorry, it isn't. Unless you are terrifically out of shape (severe obesity), you are better off working on your social skills than on your bench press; that will produce the results you want more quickly and directly.

The actually good reason for going to the gym is wanting a better body. Of course you may like that with a better body come a lot of other stuff, but your primary motivation must be that. It will keep you in the gym regularly and working out properly and hard. If you go in with the wrong motivation you will have other goals in front of you, and either you'll drop as soon as one of those goals is reached (probably through *other* means than working out), or you won't make much progress *because what you actually want is not that progress*.

Pushing willpower into this equation only screws up things. Willpower is violence you do to your logical mind, telling it you should expend effort for something that you don't actually want badly enough. It's self-mind rape, inflicted because you don't know how else to get something.

Now, up top I've said you must find out what you really want. No easy task. *Especially* if you ask the wrong question, such as "what do I want?". That is a wrong question because while it frames the object of your inquiry, it doesn't help you find the answer. That kind of question is like writing down an equation and staring at it. The steps to find the solution require your to modify the equation so that it will help you find the solution.

So what should you ask instead? you need not start close to the answer. I like "what is it that I like to do, that I genuinely enjoy?". This question has an easy answer because you only need to access your memory. I'll use myself as an example because I'm not good enough to speak of this only theoretically. If I search through my memory, I find that I really like traveling with friends. I really like tabletop RPGs and other kinds of alternate realities. And I really fucking love applying theoretical laws to extract predictions on the real world and then verify them (it's called doing experiments); it gives me one kind of special intellectual pleasure that equals nothing else in my life. I also genuinely love pussy, especially eating pussy. Recently, I've realized that when I was in terrific shape (laying basketball) I felt awesome, and that feeling strong and powerful is a great thing I had forgotten about.

I'd like to highlight that these are the things that I genuinely, profoundly enjoy. They are not the only things I just like and all the things I like: there's much more going on in my life, such as cooking a mean steak and watching great movies, but as much as I like those activities I don't have that kind of special affection as I have for the others.

So embark on this journey of self discovery. Analyze your past life and find out what you liked to do, what you profoundly enjoyed, and see how to get to do more of that.

Doing this alone has been a huge change in my life. First of all, it has ridden me of the guilt of not having willpower. Then it has enabled me to logically determine what I should do and I why I'm going to do it. I guess examples might be in order, but if you don't care just skip to the next bold sentence.

So, tabletop RPGs. I know, stupid, but I genuinely enjoy them. After understanding how much I liked them and the exact way in which I liked to play them, I set out to get what I wanted: a stable, mature group. It didn't take more than calling up a few people and see if they were up for it.

Next, physics. In my first year of college I had average grades; I am very smart, but as I saw no immediate reason why I should have done my homework, I didn't, or forced myself to, which made it a chore, which isn't the best way to undertake an intellectual pursuit. So I got average grades. After coming to these conclusions a few months ago, I started to reframe why I went to college to study physics, and suddenly I was able to see the beauty of it all once again. The circuit solving problem was no longer about finding out the frequency of the wave, it was about how the fundamental laws interplay to produce, with this remarkably simple circuit, the precise radio wave I calculate. Interesting, from my point of view. My grades have skyrocket because not I only do I study enough, I also study the right way.

Trips with friends: I overrode the usual random selection and booking method we use (i.e. doing everything last minute) because I knew where I wanted to go and that it would be awesome for everyone else, so Berlin here we come.

Pussy. I've been single for the last four months in which I didn't get laid, because you know to meet girls you have to go out and meet them blah blah blah. That's actually not true, you actually just have to go to any social gathering with friends and you end up meeting ladies anyway. Then, if you realize, actually realize, that you actually want to get laid instead of "being social" or whatever other bullshit is advised pretty much everywhere on the god-damn internet, it doesn't really take much. You basically just have to be horny and find a girl which shares the same feeling. I *know* it doesn't feel that easy but it actually is. So yeah, pussy, check.

Lastly, fitness. I had tried multiple times to go to the gym and get back in shape, mostly out of a sense of self respect. Playing a few soccer games with friends actually reminded me that it's all flavors of awesome being in shape. So I went back to the gym *to try and see if I actually wanna do it*. It's going pretty great for now, but I'll tell you in a few months.

**Cheating, or getting you motivated on stuff you are not**

If you've read the previous paragraph, you should now be like "what the fuck? isn't your whole point to do what you want, not what you should want?". If you thought that good, I made an impression. One point I didn't mention though is that you can't use the above method to find out anything you could possibly want. You haven't experienced everything from every point of view. Example: you might have gone to the club to party with friend, and maybe that sucked for you (it did for me), but maybe you've never been to the club to listen to the renowned DJ that's playing tonight, and you might like dancing among strangers to awesome music (I do and I didn't think I would, I used to only listen to metal). Or you might have never tried parachuting. Or going to the theater to watch Hamlet. Point is, even the stuff you didn't like in the past might be worth checking again, especially if there's a logical argument for why you might like it (i.e. Hamlet is universally regarded as awesome).

So, going back to our overused example, fitness. There's plenty of logical arguments why you should be in shape, ranging from health to social advantages to purely athletic stuff (but mostly health). So how do you (eheh) get motivated to work out? find a related activity that involves working out that you dig! Hiking, canoeing, snorkeling, dance, martial arts, any of the thousands of sports, some crafts... I say that there's about 4 people on the whole planet which enjoy no physical activity at all. Find yours. Do it because you enjoy. Reap fitness benefits. [...]. Profit!!!

Good grades? Well first of all reconsider why you are going to college and if you are in the right major. Maybe you are not. Doing engineering and only enjoy the math courses? switch to mathematics. Enjoy no course at all? not even a little bit? change major completely, look through your other intellectual pursuits for inspiration.

**The bottom line**

Any method which requires you to abdicate your reason is bullshit. It's dangerous and doesn't work unless you are an indoctrinated fool. To get motivation, find out what you want. To find out what you want, ask tangential question, such as "what do I profoundly enjoy?". Then cheat yourself into trying different things because you have not yet experienced everything you might like, and even stuff you didn't like you haven't seen from all perspectives.