>>2619
Relying on motivation is a sure way of insuring you will forever be stuck in this cycle of motivated and interested and directionless zombie. Contrary to what you may think, motivation is completely unreliable and not what you should use if you are trying to start a path to improvement. Why? Because it always runs out and on top of that it depends on your feelings. Sure, at 11pm in the night it's easy to say "I'm going to wake up at 6am and then I'm going to jog and then I'm going to study for 12 hours", but when your alarm clock rings at 6, it's a completely different story.. We've all been there and done that and it sucks, it really does. But the good thing is there are better ways of getting shit done.
You're main focus right now should be on willpower and forming habits. The both go hand in hand so it's good but basically, once your task turns into a habit, it won't matter how hard it is or how long it is, you'll instinctually do it without a fuss. Even that exaggerated example that I've made above is possible to do.
So how do you form habits? First of all write down every single thing you want to start doing, whether it's waking up early, programming or jogging every single day. To get my point across clearer I'm going to use push ups as an example but obviously you can vary. So lets assume you write down that you want to start doing 500 push ups a day.
You wouldn't start with 500 push ups a day(By this I mean a lot of sets that all eventually add up to 500) because if you did you'd burn out like always, willpower will be able to keep something like this going for a while but eventually you will burn the fuck out and end up like you are now, doing things this way is not an effective way of doing things. Instead you are going to start, so small that you will require very little motivation to do it let alone effort, it has to be so easy there is no chance you won't do it. So something like 50 push ups.
Now what you would need is a trigger. A trigger is basically an established habit, something you already regularly do anyway, examples of this are, eating breakfast, eating dinner, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, maybe checking out a specific site at a specific time or even going to the bathroom. For this example lets use the bathroom as the trigger.
Everytime you'd go the bathroom you'd do 10 push ups straight after and as soon your finished you'd reward yourself by putting your hands in the air and saying to yourself "I'm awesome".
After every few days you'd gradually increase the number of push ups you'd have to do until eventually after like 4 weeks to 2 months you'd be doing 500 push ups a day without a second thought.
tl;dr
>Write down everything you want to do
>Start so small you'll 100% do it
>Find a trigger and use said trigger to remind you to do your task
>Reward yourself each time you do your task with a simple I'm awesome
>Gradually increase the amount of effort you have to put into your task (In the case of push ups increase amount, in the case of study you add more hours in)
This is in my opinion a good investment because it's almost guaranteed to succeed if your gradual increase isn't too drastic and if you keep rewarding yourself. I wouldn't start with one task, I'd start withj many small tasks. Think of it as you planting a bunch of seeds now, that a few weeks to months from now will be full grown plants.
Good look man.