There’s a school of motivational theory that basically says hey, kid, you’re never going to be spontaneously motivated to do the laundry. Nobody wakes up at three AM wanting to do laundry unless they’re manic or on cocaine. The trick to finding motivation is to just start doing whatever it is that needs to be done. Even if you aren’t motivated to start, you may be motivated to keep going. The mental process of wanting to start doing something is fundamentally different from the process of wanting to continue doing it.
New research suggests that these two elements of task completion activate biologically discrete systems within the brain. Difficulties in starting tasks may be about more than overcoming fear or inertia. The process is controlled by a system independent of the one involved in keeping a task going.
ScienceDaily: Brain’s Voluntary Chain-of-command Ruled By Not One But Two Captains
Distinct brain networks for adaptive and stable task control in humans (abstract)
I’m looking forward to seeing how this might play out with regards to bipolar disorder and depression. Could some imbalance between these systems be behind the infamous manic half-finished projects, or the can’t-find-the-car-keys inability to self-start that depressives suffer from?
