I make my bed every morning, but this morning I didn’t want to. Probably because I simply didn’t want to get out of bed, but I also just didn’t feel like making any kind of effort.

It’s February, the end of one of the darkest and most depressing months on the calendar. The sun doesn’t rise until 7ish and even when it does, it’s cloudy and cold. All I want to do is stay in bed.

I Don’t Want To, But I’m Going To

I haven’t used an alarm since we went on lockdown during covid. That was the last time I had to drive anyone to school or leave the house for a meeting. School stayed online until graduation 2 years later and my meetings were by way of Zoom for the same duration.

I didn’t need an alarm anyway, I was waking up all night long like clockwork with hot flashes.

This morning, as I was mentally preparing to get out of bed, I said to myself “I don’t want to make the bed today.”

Without thinking I responded to myself – because now that the kids are gone I talk to myself all the time, though I suppose one could make the argument that I was talking to myself when my kids were still home.

Anyway, I responded to myself “I don’t want to, but I’m going to.”

And so I did. I got up, put on my socks, threw a sweatshirt over my t-shirt and unbunched my leggings that tend to ride up only one leg while I sleep, and made my bed.

I Don’t Want To, But I’m Going To

After drinking my coffee and catching up on emails it was time to get the day going. It was time for a shower which meant I’d have to dry my hair – which during the cold months is the last thing I want to do, but I had such impressive bedhead – and had already shown it to my neighbor this morning looking like Poindexter from Revenge of the Nerds while letting the dogs out – I really had no choice.

But I didn’t want to.

All I wanted to do was take the day off. Do nothing and just veg on the couch and scroll through Twitter for hours. And I can. I work from home, I work for myself and I have no deadlines.

A dangerous place to be.

I’ve never been in this situation before. When I was a kid I had to get my mother going each morning. I had to bathe her and get her dressed each morning before I left for school. I didn’t want to bathe and dress her each morning, but I had no choice – she needed help and not doing it wasn’t an option. I was able to get my mom ready everyday, but couldn’t manage to hand in my homework, or even do my homework – mostly because I didn’t want to do it, so I didn’t – if I’m being honest.

I did that pretty much until the time I had kids of my own who also needed help getting dressed and bathed.

It was super easy for me to do these things not because I wanted to, but because I had to.

I wasn’t motivated, I simply had a job to do.

So now I’m in a situation where I need to motivate myself. There’s no one nagging me, no one who needs my help – except the dogs who can’t reach the top of the fridge where I keep their food. If I want to achieve something, or simply generate an income – I have to motivate myself. And yeah, you’d think paying the bills would be motivation enough, but the work I do is a long haul kind of work – I have systems in place that allow me to slack off. Granted, these took years to implement through luck and skill, but now that they’re in place I have a lot of flexibility.

Enough that if I get lazy for too long, I will ironically lose those systems.

So I need consistency which means even if I don’t want to do something I will do it anyway.

I Don’t Want To, And I Didn’t

During the winter I walk at the mall each day because I don’t like walking on the ice or in the cold. I walk in a temperature controlled environment with a whole bunch of other people doing the same thing. But the walk can be boring. I’ve been going to the Mall of America every weekday all winter long for more than 30 years. I’ve seen it all out there. And it gets really boring.

Today, I didn’t want to go. I mean I really did not want to go.

And I didn’t.

At least not yet, but I don’t think I will because yesterday I walked twice as long as I normally do so I figured I banked those steps. Even if my Apple Watch doesn’t function that way.

Consistency is the key I have learned. You can achieve anything if you simply show up and try.

It sounds so simple, and yet it’s taken me so long to figure it out. I’ve put out two books in the last 6 months, but it took me 15 years to get to the point where I just did it each day until it was done.

And that formula works for probably everything that we want to accomplish.

I gave up perfection – which was my bottleneck – and just went for word count each day. I allowed myself to write crap, as long as hit that word count.

The funny thing is, what might start out as crap, eventually – if I continued writing – would yield something worthwhile.

In the words of Nike – just do it.