When the Motivation Won’t Come, I Change My Chair

Here’s a small trick that has changed how I work as a solo founder. When I can’t find the motivation, I stop trying to summon it and just move. I get up, do a workout, and then start my day from a cafe full of other people who are also working.

It works almost every time.

When you build something alone, there’s no office hum to carry you. No colleague arriving at their desk to make the day feel like it has started. It’s just you, your laptop, and a to-do list that somehow weighs more in an empty room. For a long time I treated that flatness as a discipline problem, as if I simply needed to want it harder.

I don’t think that anymore. Motivation, at least for me, is far less about willpower and far more about where I’m sitting.

I’m writing this from a corner of Blue Tokai at half past three, and it has been a genuinely good day. A workout in the morning, one private class, a meeting with a fellow YouTuber, my task list for the week mapped out, a flight booked for Raksha Bandhan, and somewhere in the middle, the news that another offline corporate training is starting. None of it enormous on its own. All of it adding up to a day that feels like proof I’m moving.

That feeling is the whole game, and I’ve stopped waiting around to feel it before I begin. I change my surroundings, I start moving, and the motivation tends to catch up. Move your body. Change your scene. Put yourself near other people doing focused work. Especially when you’re building something alone, that’s not a small trick. Some days it’s the entire job.

So if you’re staring down a flat, low-energy Monday, maybe don’t wait to feel ready. Go find a room with a bit of life in it.

Reporting live, and very caffeinated, from Blue Tokai. 🎤