Motivation is fleeting but routine persists.

When there is something that you want to do regularly (exercise, doing the final boring part of some sideproject, cleaning the house...) you remove willpower from the equation and set a day and a time.

For example, everyday from 18 to 19 I work on my sideprojects, or saturdays from 16 to 18 is house cleaning time. There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period.

The nice thing about routine is that the first times it is hard, but after some repetitions your mind (and body) begin to get used and it transforms into a routine and then it's like it's written in stone. That time period of that day X is for Y and it is what it is.

Routine can be used for bad things but also for good things.

We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling.

All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)

I also question the universality of it. No amount of exercise changed my depression or made life any less miserable. Anti-depressants finally helped me get past the trauma I was unable to properly process otherwise.

That may be true if you're severely depressed, but I think it can save you if you're starting to get depressed. That's what happened to me at one point, and an online comment saved me.

I was like 60% depressed but on my way there. I just took my first computer science class in college but I was overly ambitious when I participated in an undergrad CS research. The stress and imposter syndrome was shoving me to the downward spiral.

I posted some gloomy thoughts on an online forum. It was long ago, but I remember the post contained how I could kind of relate to the villain while watching the movie The Dark Knight Rises.

Some online person advised me "lift weights". I had never tried seriously lifting weights, but I was living in a student apartment 10 minutes away from the student gym, so I decided to give it a try. I can't forget the sensation when I did a set of bench press. After a period of amassing so much stress, each rep felt like I was reaching my hand into my brain, directly scooping out the waste and tossing it away.

I became much more active after that, and successfully finished the research and the degree.

It's like how homelessness is more reversible for people who became homeless less than a year ago, and why organizations focus on those groups.

I think the real exhortation is to develop a multi-pronged strategy for managing depression. I didn't feel like my depressed life got durably better until I had both exercise and therapy, and there are still times where things aren't going well with no clear discernible reason. I suspect that adding a low dose of medication on top would help.

Every additional coping mechanism you add, that works well for you, provides defense in depth.

Well... sure. I've had trouble with anxiety and it's actually an incredibly anxiety provoking thing for me to go to therapy. But I read enough information telling me that therapy is good for anxiety so I finally went. I think there's people out there who need to know that exercise is helpful for depression, even if the depression makes it difficult.

Much like the sibling comment I started walking around the local park before spending more time hiking. I live semi rurally though and wouldn't want to walk in an urban environment.

I normally feel much better after walking and cycling. Also I think doing something repetitive like walking allows you to think, tune out of other things.

It doesn't have to take deep discipline. I started my routine by just going for short walk after dinner everyday and it built up from there. It's intimidating to have to start at gym for 60 minutes 3x/week. Just do whatever little you like - a few pushups, a walk, a dance and stop when its not enjoyable. It tends to naturally build up.

Also the bad times can be a great time to build good habits. I’ve tried and failed to develop an exercise routine many times, but it wasn’t until I was laid off for 6 months that it finally stuck. I had a friend who went to the gym every day in the middle of the day so I didn’t really have a reason not to go. 6 months was long enough for the habit to stick and fast forward years later and I still have the habit. It’s been so good that I regularly think about how good it was that I had the opportunity to be laid off.

You can also have a "deeply-disciplined routine" and get thrown out of it and hit depression because exactly by that one impact.

Source: Myself.

its amazing that we haven't found anyone dualwielding the skill of therapist and personal trainer. we already have things like sex surrogacy (https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy) so its not like it would be that weird by comparison.

I think we also approach exercise the wrong way. And IMO this is true with sleep too (which also impacts depression). We're using the wrong metrics.

The most important thing to get started with working out is just to start doing some exercise. You can start on one push up a day or something. It's all about creating momentum and habit.

Once you do it, then you can increase the time and the intensity and optimize exercise and all. But doing sport should be about doing one push up a day and thats it. About starting as slow as you can.

Sleep is the same in that we try to sleep as much as we can, and get as much REM and deep sleep, and these are not the right metrics for most people. The most important is just to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday. That's it.

People are obsessed with trying to go to sleep at some point in time. Don't. Go to sleep when you're tired, wake up sleep deprived at the right time, the next evening it'll be easier to sleep at the right time

One thing that worked well for me is I switched my transportation to almost exclusively bicycle. Do I always want to exercise? Do I always want to get on my bike when it's below zero in active weather? No, not always. But if I want to get where I'm going that's my option and I get the exercise in the process (and save a buttload of money too)

Nail on the head. I know that exercise will make me feel better, but during a period of depression/grief I could not even get out the house.

> Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose.

This is what medication for more severe cases of things like depression is supposed to offer: an opportunity to learn, usually through therapy, to cope with the condition in a healthy way.

“Action precedes motivation.” ― Robert McKain

This seems to work for me at least. If I start trying to reason with myself why I should get out of bed at 5am to go to the gym rather than excuse XYZ, I will talk myself out of it.

If I simply start "moving" and start doing "stuff" without engaging my brain, things happen and within a short space of time, I'm pumping iron and feeling great.

My two cents on this topic is to create short term, superficial incentives to help create the practices that yield the long term incentives. For me this is paying extra for a gym with a hot tub, sauna, and cold plunge. Now I derive relaxation from the workout, but before that I also received a lot of support from the knowledge that the amenities afterwards were waiting for me.

I'm not a big believer in discipline.

True, but the same is true for therapy. Finding a good therapist isn't easy, and having depression certainly doesn't make it easier.

That is true. And motivation is not a fixed variable. It is possible to get increased motivation by a better plan, resulting in increased self efficacy.

From studies like this, maybe more awareness and perhaps funding to solutions providing smaller steps

Shameless plug, I am building one: Low friction mini games, social, squats/situps/pushups. Feelgoodcrew.com

This is 100% true, and what I'm about to describe isn't an attempt to falsify it: took me 11 years and 3 cities to figure it out.

You don't have to exercise so much as get moving.

I'm the best I've been in 37 years, and it's because in August I started forcing myself to just keep walking whenever I went out to have a cigarette. I was in Boston, and would end up ~nowhere and exhausted.

Then started doing random stuff: "might as well walk to Harvard Square instead of the bike path again" "might as well go to a bookstore instead of somewhere random" "I should use the skate park, I don't fit in*, but I miss rollerblading from middle school"

Then my dog died, 2 days later I severely sprained my ankle at the skate park and couldn't walk anywhere substantive for a couple weeks. By the time I'm able to do a sustained 10m+ walk it's winter.

Went to visit California as a not-tech-employee for the first time, so I saw San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles for the first time. And the same habit kicked in, in SLO I ended up hiking for the first time on what I find out later was not a real trail, end up hiking every day that week.

Get to LA and it's nothing like I would have thought. Egalitarian, tons of stuff to do, and Waymo is a godsend. Whenever I get antsy there's somewhere to go and a way to get there.

2 weeks later, I got an apartment in LA, moving away from Northeast for the first time in my life. I could see me just spending another 4 months decaying in Boston until its barely warm enough out to take a 30m walk, and I'm tired of that cycle..

All that to say, I'm fit, I had a great career in high school sports, I played basketball occasionally, but couldn't really get active consistently. Treadmill was never stimulating enough to keep my attention on anything other than being bored. In retrospect, I really wish I heard this old saw ~all of us know and heard it as "moving around" instead of exercise.

(n.b. this was all under active mental health care x medications spanning a decade+. It's not that the mental health care was useless, I don't think I could have done what I did without it. But it couldn't "fix" me on it's lonesome, only enable me to get moving.)

* in retrospect this was wrong, plenty of newbies, and one of the most welcoming social environments I've been in. just people out there all trying to do the same thing and supporting each other.

Once exercise becomes a habit, it's very easy to do even on days when your mood is terrible. A strict routine (initially) is the trick to making things easier forever.

You definitely want to build that habit when you're at your best.

i think what is missing from this narrative is not whether or not people have a routine, it is that exercise elevates your mood away from the depressed state, therapy encourages you to question your thoughts and decisions through out your day that might lead you away from a depressed state. to put it a different way, whats the point of exercising every day if you continue the thoughts and habits that are less than satisfactory to you without any self awareness?

I always wondered if this kind of research was just finding that depressed people motivated to exercise are already in a recovery mindset

Fun fact, people suffering from loss of quality of life issues don't lack motivation. Lots of these people are in great pain, constantly, every day. My mother had a hip issue where the pain could instantly shoot up so bad she couldn't move (from just the normal, constant, almost in tears pain). She couldn't risk going somewhere to exercise, she would be stuck. She couldn't risk exercising on days where she needed to work the next day. Some days she would break down crying going to the grocery store because she had gotten stuck there the previous time she went.

A LOT of quiet unassuming people are INSPIRINGLY motivated to push through INCREDIBLE pain and obstacles, every day. Many that prevent them from 'just exercising until life gets better'. It is bullshit to say they lack motivation/character/willpower.

Motivation generally follows action, not the other way around.

I hear ice swimming also works.

If you are or you know some that is depressed one of the best things you can do is start exercising with someone.

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