What’s the reason you don’t have the motivation to do things?

Many people have asked me in live streams, saying that I seem to be in a state of having excess energy all the time. They don’t know how I maintain it, or how I manage to do it. There are, of course, many factors, but the most important one is what I want to share today: it’s not your diet, and it’s not sleep—those are important too, but they’re not the most important. The most important thing is protecting the number of times you make decisions.

Within a single day, the number of decisions you can make—and the things you care about—is very limited for everyone. Once you go beyond your own threshold, you fall into decision paralysis. You lose the drive to do anything and feel like, “I didn’t do anything, but I’m just exhausted.” A housewife’s decisions start in the morning with what the children should eat, then what needs the elderly have today, then comparing prices three times to show herself she’s good at managing money and being considerate—after making all these specific decisions, I don’t think they still have the energy to do things that are truly more important. Tired? Of course they’re tired, but this kind of tiredness often doesn’t lead to good results; when it comes to effort versus outcome, there’s no leverage.

Someone might say: “In a family, someone has to do these things, right?” Yes and no. Some families need it; some don’t. What families need it? Families with extremely limited resources. For those families, we shouldn’t say “let them eat meat porridge,” either—they really do have to do it themselves. But that’s because their social value in general is too low: the time of people who can do it better than you is worth more than your time, and the value of what you’d do instead is even lower—so doing it yourself is the most cost-effective. But some families don’t need to, for example comparing prices three times. If you buy it a bit more expensively, what difference does it make? Today if the groceries cost more, and the toilet paper costs more—what impact does that have on your life? Basically none. Yet we waste our precious number of daily decisions on these trivial matters that don’t matter.

First, we belittle ourselves and push ourselves into a position where we’re worth very little. Then, within that worthless range, we try to grab onto something that seems like it’s worth a bit, making it look like we still “have some use.” What should the children eat in the morning? You say it’s just what they eat—what does it matter? You have to carve flowers into excrement and exaggerate the role of excrement, to make yourself seem valuable.

At work, if you “mess around” a bit, you still have to suspect and guard against everyone—backstabbing politics with the office next door—and you have to constantly watch out for the boss walking in. Your mind is under extreme tension all day. You don’t actually get much done; by the end of the day, you just want to lie flat and can’t muster the interest to work. Why? Because you’re consuming your decisions and your mental energy on all sorts of pointless little things.

Here’s a fact: the kind of people who are always full of energy have some talent, but it’s like phone battery. Yes, there can be some difference in capacity inborn talent, but not that much—there isn’t anyone who can use their battery forever without ever running out. Those who are always high on charge and efficient must be the ones who save resources and spend them on places where the output-to-input ratio is more cost-effective. For instance, solving a hard problem can bring disproportionate returns—that’s the kind of place. They screen out most things in this world, and put things that are irrelevant to them and low-impact things outside their queue and attention range.

For example, I often receive invitations. Sometimes it’s friends I know well asking me to attend their product launch as a guest. Sometimes it’s associations or universities asking me to give a talk. I reject them all directly, with zero mental friction. When people run into this situation, they might think it over: “Is this a good opportunity? Should I help out? What if I might need it later?” I have a set of automatically executed procedures. Anything unrelated to my current main goal gets rejected by itself, with almost no need for my brain to make a decision.

I summarize it into four nos: don’t see it, don’t hear it, don’t care, don’t calculate.

Today I found my closet was overflowing a bit. It took about 5 minutes, and I could throw away more than half the clothes; today I thought a game was fun, so I spent money on it. When I didn’t want to play anymore, I just deleted it. What’s “don’t see it, don’t hear it” is here; what’s “don’t care, don’t calculate” is there. I have a hierarchy of priorities in my mind. Once something higher up in the hierarchy needs to be done, no matter what I’m doing right now, who is in front of me, and where I am—I can immediately cut it off, stand up and leave, or shut down everything that’s currently halfway through, without endlessly纠结.

We often see some artists who are sloppy (although later, some fake artists and directors end up trying to mimic them and turning themselves into that stereotypical look). It’s not that being sloppy or having a big beard automatically makes someone an artist. It’s the other way around: they’re obsessed with creation. For days, weeks, even months, they might not go out. The floor may be full of takeout containers, because they don’t have the mental space to pay attention to everything that’s unrelated—or only loosely related at best—to the art work.

Most people can’t tolerate such an environment at all. This “can’t tolerate” is because your attention has deviated from your main line, and then you become aware that things are messy. But for them, they can’t even focus on that information—so how could there be talk of whether it’s “messy” or not?

Most people don’t realize that mental energy is also an important productive resource. Every time you pay attention to something with a tiny impact, every time you’re forced to respond to someone, every time you纠结 or hesitate into a decision—little by little is the use of mental energy. To accomplish something and solve a hard problem requires a lot of力. If your mental energy is always down to empty—like you’re running on empty blood—you’ll fall into rigidity. You’ll avoid the hard part, and give yourself excuses to rest. Then it’s impossible to ever complete anything truly high-value.

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