How to Get Motivated When You’re Exhausted: The Science of Starting
Show Notes
It is late January. The new year energy has faded, and the reality of winter has set in. If you find yourself staring at your to-do list, bargaining with yourself to "just scroll for five more minutes" until you feel ready, you are not alone.
But here is the truth: If you wait until you aren't tired, you will be waiting forever.
In this episode, we are throwing out the old manual that says you need Inspiration before Motivation. We are replacing it with the "Do Something Principle": Action comes first.
Free Download: The "Do It Tired" Action Kit
Don't let this episode become just another thing you listened to and forgot. I’ve distilled the science and the strategies into a single, printable page. Grab this cheat sheet to remind yourself how to "push the merry-go-round," plus get the 5-Minute Menu worksheet to help you beat decision fatigue when you're exhausted.
In This Episode:
00:33) – The "Truck Confession": Why I secretly hope clients cancel when it's cold.
(01:33) – Shoutout to Christalee Froese and her new book Permission Granted.
(04:08) – The trap of "waiting for the vibe to shift".
(07:08) – Business Lesson: How I lost 6 months of momentum on the Paced App by waiting to feel "ready".
(09:29) – The Science: Why Mark Manson says we have the loop backward (Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation).
(11:38) – Activation Energy: Why the "Merry-Go-Round" is hardest to push at the start.
(13:25) – Tool #1: The 5-Second Rule (Mel Robbins).
(14:51) – Tool #2: The 5-Minute Timer (for big, scary tasks).
(16:38) – Tool #3: Habit Stacking (and how my nephew uses it to get fit).
(18:41) – How to use the Paced App to stop numbing out.
(20:24) – Recap & Your Weekly Challenge.
Resources Mentioned:
Free Download: – Includes the loop diagram and the 5-Minute Menu.
Book: Permission Granted by Christalee Froese (Pre-order at morejoy.ca).
Book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck* by Mark Manson.
Book: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins.
Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear.
This Week's Challenge:
Stop waiting for the sun to come out. Do it tired. Do it with messy hair. Set a timer for five minutes, count down 5-4-3-2-1, and go.
🔗 CONNECT WITH RHONDA
Website: rhondalavoie.com
Instagram: @rhonda.lavoie
Facebook: Rhonda Lavoie
TikTok:@ rhonda.lavoie
Follow the Paced App journey: getpaced.app
· Music for The Rhonda Lavoie Podcast written and recorded by Wade and Tan Fehr.
Transcript
[00:00:05] I have a confession to make, and honestly, it might make me look a little bad. I'm a real estate agent. My livelihood literally depends on showing houses, but I have to admit, there have been days dark January days here in Saskatchewan, it's minus 30 outside. The wind is howling. I'm sitting in my truck, the heater is blasting, and I'm waiting for a client to arrive at a new listing.
[00:00:33] And I'm sitting there gripping the steering wheel, secretly praying, please don't show up. Please call and cancel. It's so miserable out there. I know the lockbox is going to be Froesen shut. I know I'm gonna have to trudge through the deep snow to find it, and I'm going to get snow inside my shoes, which is just the worst feeling.
[00:00:54] And even though this showing pays my mortgage in that moment, just for a flash. I am actively rooting against my own bank account. Why? Because I'm waiting to feel like doing it. And spoiler alert, you're never ever going to feel like doing hard things when it's 30 below outside.
[00:01:19] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Rhonda Lavoie. Now, before we dive in, if you're watching on video, you might notice my t-shirt. Today it says More joy, permission granted. This is actually from my good friend Christalee Froese.
[00:01:33] She has her second book coming out this month, literally right now in January. It's called Permission Granted. It will be such a beautiful resource. It's all about giving yourself the tools to find that joy again, to give yourself permission to rest, to laugh, and to begin again. I know a lot of early readers are already raving about it. Marti Piller, who works with Dr. Jody Carrington called it a gentle invitation back to yourself.
[00:02:01] And I think we could all use a bit of that right now. If you wanna grab a signed copy, you can pre-order it now at morejoy.ca. And honestly, wearing this t-shirt today feels like it's meant to be because while Christalee talks about permission for joy today, I wanna talk about a different kind of permission.
[00:02:20] I wanna give you permission to be tired. I wanna give you permission to be unmotivated, and I want to give you permission to show up anyway. It is late in January and the holiday sparkle is gone. The Christmas tree is down, or maybe it's still in the corner.
[00:02:36] I'm not judging. But that initial adrenaline rush of the new year, new me has definitely worn off. Now we are left with the reality of winter. It's cold, it's gray, and if you're anything like me, your energy levels are not exactly peaking right now and today. I wanna talk to you specifically to women listening who have big goals for this year, whether that's fitness, organizing the house, or finally launching that side hustle.
[00:03:04] But who feel completely stuck. You're tired, you are bone deep tired, and you're waiting for some lightning bolt of motivation to strike you so you can finally get moving. Well, grab your coffee. We need to have a straight talk about why that lightning bolt isn't coming and why the secret to success isn't getting motivated.
[00:03:27] It's learning how to do it tired. So let's look at why we get stuck here. I was thinking about this the other day while looking at my own to-do list. I just wanted to nap. I didn't wanna record content. I didn't wanna look at spreadsheets and honestly, you guys know me. I love spreadsheets. So if I don't wanna look at the stuff I do, like, you know, something is off. I found myself sitting there staring at the screen, basically bargaining with myself, thinking, okay, I'll just grab a coffee, scroll for a bit, wait for a second wind, and then I'll feel like tackling this.
[00:04:08] I was waiting for the vibe to shift, and that right there is the trap. That moment made me realize that most of us have a total misconception about how our brains actually work. We think motivation is a prerequisite for action. We think the order goes like this. We think step one, I get inspired.
[00:04:28] Step two, I feel motivated. Step three, I do the thing. Sounds logical, right? I will go to the gym when I feel energetic. Well, let's look at the reality of your life, especially for women in their 40's and 50 range. You are likely the CEO of your household. You're running kids to school.
[00:04:47] And maybe you're on the parent council like me, and you know how much work that is. You're checking in on aging parents. You are managing a career. You're constantly pouring from your cup into everybody else's, and usually the first thing that gets cut when you're running on empty, it's you.
[00:05:08] It's your dreams, it's your self-care. You tell yourself, oh, work on my business idea when I have the energy. Or I'll go for that walk when I'm not so exhausted. But here's the hard truth, and I say this with so much love. If you wait until you aren't tired, you'll be waiting forever. Sounds harsh, but because life doesn't stop,
[00:05:31] the kids don't stop needing you. , The house doesn't stop getting messy. We sacrifice our me time because we think it's selfish to take it when there are other fires to put out. And then when we finally do, carve out an hour. We're too drained to use it. So we sit on the couch, we scroll, we wait for motivation to save us.
[00:05:55] I wanna go back to that story I mentioned, uh, off the top, the, the me sitting in the truck story, because I don't want you to think I'm immune to this just because I have a podcast and a business. Real estate is a grind.
[00:06:07] People see the sold signs on Instagram, but they don't see the minus 30 days. I remember this one specific day. It was brutally cold outside. I had three showings lined up and I'm a professional, right? So the day before or the morning of, I always confirm with my clients.
[00:06:24] I send the text, Hey, just confirming our 2:00 PM showing. And there's this split second, just a flash where my thumb is hovering over the phone and a little voice in my head says, I hope they say they can't make it.
[00:06:35] It's silly. It's actually ridiculous because I love my clients and once I get outta the truck and I meet them and we start looking at houses, I love it. I genuinely enjoy the process and it's the main income source for my family.
[00:06:49] But that transition, that moment of going from safe and warm to cold and working, it's a wall, and I've paid the price for listening to that voice in the past. Let me give you a real business example of what happens when you wait for the right time. . We talk about the Paced App on this show.
[00:07:08] It's a tool I'm incredibly proud of. But here's the confession. I had the idea for Paced in January last year, 2025. I knew it was a good idea. I felt it to my gut. I saw the need for it, but did I launch it then? No. Did I start building it? No. I waited.
[00:07:30] I waited for things to calm down. I waited for a sign. I waited to feel like I had the mental bandwidth to take on a tech project. I kept seeing signs, little signals that I should do it, but I ignored them. I didn't actually take action until July of last year, 2025.
[00:07:48] Six months, half a year, I lost six months of momentum. I lost six months of potential revenue. I lost six months of helping people disconnect from their phones, all because I was waiting to feel ready and looking back, I wasn't any less busy in July than I was in January.
[00:08:06] Actually, it was the opposite. I just finally decided to move. So why does our brain do this? Why do we self-sabotage by waiting? I did a bit of digging into this because I needed to know if I was just lazy or if something else was going on.
[00:08:29] And here's what I found. The problem isn't us. The problem is that we've been operating with a broken manual society, social media, maybe even just our own logic. It all tells us that the process is linear. We are taught that the order goes like this. Inspiration, motivation, Action
[00:08:50] We think we need to find the inspiration first. Then that inspiration will give us the motivation. And only then once we feel pumped up and ready will we take action. So we sit there, we wait for something to inspire us so we can feel motivated enough to move. That is exactly why I was sitting in my truck at minus 30 waiting to feel like getting out.
[00:09:14] I was waiting for steps one and two to show up so I could finally get to step three. But the reality is, step one and two, they never show up. They just stay frozen. The truth is we have the order completely backwards.
[00:09:29] There is a concept called the Do something principle. It comes from the author Mark Manson. You probably know him. He wrote that bright orange book, the Subtle Art of Not Giving An F*ck. I love that title by the way, direct and honest. Manson argues that motivation isn't the cause of action, it's the result.
[00:09:53] And he isn't the only one saying this. I was actually just listening to a podcast yesterday with Mel Robbins and James Clear. He's the guy who wrote Atomic Habits and they were discussing this exact same thing. They all agree on the real loop.
[00:10:07] It actually works like this. Action, inspiration, motivation. Let's actually break those down because they kind of sound like buzzwords and tell you define them. So first you have action. This is the physical movement. This is opening the laptop. This is putting on the running shoes.
[00:10:30] It is the mechanical act of starting. Even if your brain is screaming, no. Then comes inspiration. This is the result of the action. It's that little spark you get after you sent that first email and you think, oh, that wasn't so bad.
[00:10:48] Or you are five minutes into the walk and you think fresh air actually feels nice. And then finally we get motivation. This is the sustained drive. This is the momentum that makes you wanna keep going. You see, motivation is the reward, not the prerequisite. Now I know you're thinking, okay, Rhonda, I get it.
[00:11:14] I need to take action first. But we all know that is easier said than done. Why is step one so difficult? Well, there's actually a scientific reason for that resistance. It's called activation energy. It basically means that it takes more energy to start a reaction than it does to keep it going.
[00:11:38] And I'll give you an example. Think about the playground. Merry-go-round. Remember those old heavy metal ones we used to play on that don't really exist anymore? Well. When that thing is stopped and is loaded up with kids, getting it moving is a beast. You have to plant your feet.
[00:11:55] You have to drive in your toes and push with all your body weight. It feels heavy and slow and impossible, but once you get it spinning, you can stand there and just tap it with one hand and keep it going. You can practically blow on it, and it continues to spin. That is exactly what's happening in your brain on a Tuesday morning when you don't wanna do the workout.
[00:12:20] Your brain is looking at the heavy merry-go-round and screaming, that's too heavy. I'm tired. But the secret is you don't have to push hard forever. You just have to push hard for the first 30 seconds to get through the action phase. Once the inspiration kicks in, the wheel starts spinning on its own. So now we know the science.
[00:12:45] We know the merry-go-round is heavy until you get it moving. But let's be real understanding the physics doesn't make the first push any easier. When you're lying in bed at 6:00 AM. Knowing why it's hard doesn't magically make you wanna do it. You still have to find a way to trick your brain into making that first heavy shove.
[00:13:08] I'm not gonna give you some complex morning routine. We are busy women. We don't have time for that. I use three very simple, stupidly effective tricks to force that first action. The first one is the five second rule.
[00:13:25] Since we were just talking about Mel Robbins, we have to mention her book, the Five Second Rule. If you haven't read it, I do highly recommend it because she explains exactly why we get stuck. It's not about being lazy, it's that we hesitate, there's this tiny window of time, literally about five seconds between having an instinct to do something like I should get up and your brain killing it. Your brain is designed to protect you from things that are scary, difficult, and uncomfortable. So the second you hesitate.
[00:13:58] Your brain pulls the emergency break. It starts saying it's cold, you're tired, you can do it tomorrow. The five second rule is how you can beat that brain function. Here's the scenario we all deal with. You're lying in bed. It's dark, the house is freezing. You know you need to get up, but the duvet is so warm.
[00:14:18] If you lay there and think about it, you will lose, so you don't give your brain time to argue. You count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and on 1 you throw off the covers. Counting backwards actually requires focus. It distracts your prefrontal cortex just long enough for you to physically move before the excuses kick in.
[00:14:42] It sounds silly, but it works because it cuts the hesitation cord. The second trick is the five minute timer.
[00:14:51] This is my favorite one for those big scary tasks, you know, like cleaning the garage, or dare I say, doing taxes. We avoid these things because in our heads they look like mountains. We think, Ugh, cleaning the garage is going to take all day and I'm going to be exhausted.
[00:15:09] The dread of the task is actually heavier than the task itself. Here's the cheat code for you. When you are absolutely paralyzed by overwhelm, tell yourself I'm only going to do this for five minutes. That's it. You can tolerate almost anything for five minutes, right?
[00:15:28] Set a timer on your phone and promise yourself. Really promise yourself that when the timer goes off, if you want to stop, you are allowed to stop guilt free. This lowers the stakes. It turns the mountain into a mole hill. And here's what happens most of the time, you start, you get five minutes in, the timer goes off and you realize, huh, I'm already here.
[00:15:55] I've got the vacuum out. I might as well finish the living room. You have tricked your brain into overcoming that activation energy. You created momentum out of thin air. But here's the best part. Even if you do stop, even if you are in that 1% of the times where you just can't keep going, guess what? You still did five minutes of work.
[00:16:19] You folded laundry for five minutes, you answered emails for five minutes. That is five minutes more than you would've done if you're still sitting on the couch waiting for motivation. Now there's one more strategy I wanna share, and it came up in a conversation I had yesterday with my nephew, Jesse.
[00:16:38] He's 16 years old, and he was telling me about his plans for the future , and in true teenage boy fashion, he told me he wanted to get jacked. I love this age. It's very interesting, but we had to have a real talk because at 16 and honestly at 47, the want to do something doesn't always result in the action of doing it. We all want the result. We all want the muscle, but the actual work, doing the pushups every single day, that part is hard. So I told him, I said, Jesse. We have to make this so easy that you can't say no. We talked about two things. First, the concept of getting 1% better.
[00:17:23] I told him, Jesse, doing five pushups takes what? 10 seconds max. It's super easy, but if you do that 10 seconds every day for the next year. You're going to see way more results than if you try to do 100 pushups once a month, then quit because you're sore.
[00:17:46] He said, that's cool, but I just need to remember to do the five pushups, which I love that he was honest. Which led to the second piece habit stacking. This is another concept from James Clear in the atomic habits. It's where you take a habit you already have and you stack a new habit on top of it.
[00:18:06] For Jesse, it works like this. We have a house rule that kids aren't allowed on their phones in the morning until seven 30 and they are ready for school. The phone is his trigger. It's the thing he wants. So I said, okay, stack the pushups on the phone , before you reward yourself with the screen time at seven 30, do your five pushups.
[00:18:28] He's using that phone as the reward to get the hard work done. And speaking of using our phones as a reward, that brings me to the tool that has saved my sanity this year.
[00:18:41] The Paced App. Usually I talk about pace for productivity, but today I wanna talk about it in the same way I talk to Jesse as a system to stop the numbing. When we're tired, we're waiting for motivation. What do we do? A lot of us scroll, right Paced helps because it gives you an allowance. You get 30 minutes or whatever you set to check social media or to play the game that you like to play.
[00:19:11] You can just enjoy it. But once that timer hits zero. If that app gets blocked or locked, now you can just wait. You can literally let the cool down timer run out naturally, but if you wanna get back in faster, you can pay for it. And the currency is steps. The app literally says, okay, you wanna see Facebook again?
[00:19:34] Go take some steps to speed up the timer. It turns the mindless scrolling into a conscious choice. Sometimes I look at the lock screen and I think, I don't actually wanna scroll bad enough to walk forward, and I put the phone down and get back to work.
[00:19:49] Other times I do the steps, I walk around the kitchen in the pool room. Just that little bit of motion, that little bit of movement, that blood flow wakes me up. By the time I unlock the app, I have more energy than when I started.
[00:20:06] So the app is 49.99 a year Canadian dollars, and for the amount of time and mental clarity it gives back to you. It's a no brainer. So here's my challenge to you this week. Stop waiting to feel good.
[00:20:24] Stop waiting for the sun to come out. Stop waiting for the perfect time to start that business or have that tough conversation. Do it tired. Do it with messy hair. Do it while you're grumpy. Just set the timer for five minutes. Countdown, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and go. Now I know I threw a lot of these concepts at you today.
[00:20:47] Mark Manson, Mel Robbins, James Clear the merry-go-round. And if you're driving or on the treadmill, you probably didn't write any of this down, so I made it really easy for you. I put together a free do it tired action kit. It has a cheat sheet of the three tools we talked about, plus a worksheet to help you figure out your own habit stacks, just like I did with Jesse.
[00:21:08] You can grab that right now at rhondalavoie.com. All the links to the books and the pay app are in the show notes there too. Go download it, stick it to your fridge, and use it the next time you're feeling stuck because the only things worse than doing it tired is looking back six months from now, realizing you're in the exact same spot wishing you had started today.
[00:21:30] I'm Rhonda Lavoie. Keep moving, even if it's just a small step. See you next week.
