404: Motivation Not Found

I've had a few folks in the Almost Done crew ask me about motivation.
How I find it. What I do when I don’t.
How I trick my brain into starting something, anything, when everything feels stuck in standby mode.

So I figured I’d write it out.
Not as a blueprint or a fix-it guide, but as a little permission slip.
For the days when your code compiles but you don't.

Because here’s the thing: neurodivergent brains don’t run on motivation the same way most people think they should.
We spike. We stall. We buffer.
And sometimes, no matter how badly we want to do the thing, our brain just shrugs and says, "nah."

That doesn’t make you broken. Or lazy. Or behind.
It just means your operating system needs a gentler start-up sequence.

So let’s talk about that.
The guilt, the grind, the sneaky tricks that sometimes work.
And why showing up softly still counts.

You in?

You're not lazy. You're buffering.

If you're in a motivation drought right now, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not lazy.
You’re just running a system that doesn't always respond to pressure.

For neurodivergent folks, motivation isn't a steady engine. It's more like a lightning strike. Brilliant when it hits, impossible to schedule.
Some days you wake up and build a full feature before coffee.
Other days, it takes three hours to open the editor and rename a file.

That's not inconsistency. That's reality.
Especially when your brain is balancing executive dysfunction, sensory overload, and internal pressure from three different directions.

What sometimes gets the wheels turning

There's no single trick that works every time.
But here are a few things that help me when motivation goes missing:

• Breadcrumb commits
  Leave yourself a tiny note or WIP branch the night before. Something like _{// this needs finishing, future me pls help}.
  Picking up momentum is easier than building it from scratch.
• 2-minute tasks
  If a full task feels overwhelming, ask yourself, "What's the dumbest version of this I can do right now?"
  Open the project. Click a folder. Change one word. That's not failure, that's momentum.
• Permission to stall
  Give yourself space to not feel it.
  Sometimes the pressure to perform kills the spark completely.
  The weird twist is, when you give yourself permission to do nothing, you often end up doing something.

You still count, even when you can't count commits

This part matters most.
You don't have to earn your right to rest.
You don't have to "trick" yourself into being productive just to deserve food, joy, or kindness.
You're not a broken robot. You’re a human with a complex brain doing its best in a world that doesn’t make it easy.

Yes, you'll have high-output days. And yes, sometimes you'll stall out before the first commit.
Both are okay. Both are valid.
Neither defines your value.

You're allowed to start small. To start slow.
To start at all, even if that "start" is just reading this sentence.

Soft starts are still starts.

Motivation might not always arrive on schedule. But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck forever.
You can build momentum without waiting for the spark.
One breadcrumb commit. One renamed file. One tiny win.

You don’t need to feel motivated to take action sometimes the action comes first.
And every time you open the project, touch the task, or nudge things forward… you’re proving that it’s possible.

You can absolutely do this, not by forcing it, but by meeting your brain where it is and working with it.

Thanks for being here. For showing up, even if just with one tab open.

Catch you next issue,
- Simen 💛