Sometimes, showing up is enough. More than enough -- it's all you really need to do.
I've been pushing myself back into regular exercise lately -- something which is vitally important for me and which is usually one of the first casualties of fatigue, busyness, and all their sorry ilk. What this really means is forming new (old) habits -- finding ways to make these activities just *happen*, without each individual instance of them being a fresh negotiation you have to conduct with yourself.
(It's not just a question of motivation -- though there is that. I do get injured easily, and I have struggled with fatigue, a lot, over the past couple of years. Beyond the obvious of 'just feeling tired', it really messes with my brain. Getting overwhelmed, overstimulated, or overexhausted tend to entirely mess up my ability to rest, and send my body into stress overload. Which is a very unpleasant feedback loop that it can be a lot of effort to escape from. So, on days where I'm 'off nominal', the question of whether or not I should push myself is very real. Usually, the answer is 'yes'. But only usually.)
I like pushing myself, I like making progress. But the thing above all is recognising when you can just 'show up' -- defining what it means to do the thing without necessarily pushing yourself past your limits for that day, but also without copping out.
As well as motivation, and the bigger questions I mentioned, this also helps me get my shortcut around *faff* which disproportionately disincentivises me from doing something. If I'm reluctant to go for a run, or to the gym, half the reason -- more than half! -- is usually the thought of having to get changed and get out the door. That sometimes seems like an arbitrarily massive barrier to get over, and not only do you have to do that, you *then* have to actually do the entire thing!
So on those days, I move the goalposts. I ask myself 'can I just show up?' and define what that looks like. For running, showing up might just mean 'putting on my kit, getting out the door, and getting moving'. If I do that, I've shown up. If I then want to bail, immediately, for any reason, that's fine. I've made a good enough effort at the thing for today.
(This is not every time, either -- and those other times I still get to push myself.)
A more concise way to express this, I realise now (as I so often do with these posts) is: it's easy to accidentally make mental shortcuts about what you're doing. 'Going for a run' for me had become, mentally, 'go out and run three miles'. But for me, personally, and my goals, that's not *actually* what I care about on any given day. It's 'get out running a few times a week'. This 'show up' heuristic helps drag me back to that -- what I'm *really* trying to do. What I really care about doing.
The power of this, really, is in repetition. If I can build that habit (system), and do it regularly, the amount of progress I make each time matters less -- that incremental, steady progress is going to take me places. (This is how I approach many things that I care about progressing in.) By showing up and doing it, even 'badly' (relative to my ideal output), I maintain that cadence. (And, as ever, when you zoom out over the right timescale, the 'good' and 'bad' days are hard to delineate.)
And through repetition, you lower the perceived energy cost of doing the thing. You smooth off the edges. Your gear is ready at hand, familiar. You've learned to glide past the foibles and frictions. Your 'bad' day now is 100x better than the 'good' days of your past.
And onwards.