The best way to maintain a routine, productivity, and a general feeling of happiness is to get into a positive feedback loop.
The concept is very simple. First, you do something that makes you happy. This happiness then motivates you to do more stuff, like workout or diet or complete some other goal. After accomplishing that task, you feel even happier and continue to ride that high by completing something else, constantly repeating the loop of positive feedback.
This explains why we can so easily get into slumps. If you don’t have any excitement in your life, you feel bad. Feeling bad demotivates you from completing your goals and maintaining your work routine. Failure on these fronts then makes you feel even worse, perpetuating the cycle and thrusting you into a negative feedback loop.
No passion
Some people have never been in a positive feedback loop for any amount of considerable time. To get into and stay in a positive loop, you need some underlying motivation or force to keep you there. You need a passion.
The people that can’t get themselves to stay in a positive loop (barring those with depression or other medical issues) all have something in common. They don’t have any passions, or they don’t have the means to enjoy their passions.
If you don’t have a reason for getting up in the morning other than to get the daily news, then you have no raison d’être, and you will never find yourself in a positive feedback loop for a sustained amount of time.
Escape your boring routine, find something that fuels you, and pursue that passion with the goal of being the most knowledgeable and skillful practitioner of said passion.
Motivation in Waves
Without a positive feedback loop, you may notice your motivation comes in waves. For example, you get a gym membership and start going regularly. You manage to keep this up for a few months, then the motivation tapers off.
Then, what’ll most likely happen is that you get back into the gym again months later, when another wave of motivation comes. Consistency is a pipe dream without a positive feedback loop, because the waves of motivation are too infrequent. To maintain your routine and productivity, the motivation must come in a consistent (daily, if possible) cycle, hence the positive feedback loop.
At first, it’s common to think that maintaining a gym routine and a work routine are totally separate. But being overweight can prevent you from entering a positive feedback loop, thus altering your work ethic. So, two things that seem completely unrelated can end up impacting each other.
Postive vs. negative feedback loops
I used to wonder why everything always seems to be going great, or everything seems to be going badly. There’s rarely any in-between, except as a temporary transition period between the two stages.
Then I realized that positivity fuels positivity, and negativity fuels negativity. Hence the loops.
I’ll give you an example of what these two cycles look like for me:
My biggest passion is travel. I travel for months at a time. In addition to my passion, I have several other interests and hobbies that can be amplified by my passion. These include photography and language, both of which get lots of exercise during my travels.
I notice I enter a positive feedback loop when traveling. Traveling makes me feel good. It’s my reason for getting up in the morning. The high I feel from a good trek through foreign lands allows me to come back to my hotel room, crack open my laptop, and pump out some work. Completing this work makes me feel even better. Since I’m feeling good, I feel motivated to exercise and watch what I eat. This breeds even further positivity, and then the loop repeats the next day.
Then I get back home. It’s usually a nice break from life on the road, but after two weeks, I feel myself hitting a wall. The thrill of travel has subsided, after having taken time to decompress and reflect on what it meant to me. Ennui sets in, and the negative feedback loop is about to start.
Since I wake up in the morning and don’t have anything exciting to do, I can’t muster the motivation to work. Instead, I’ll occupy my mind with YouTube. Now I’m behind on work, which makes me feel like crap, so I’ll eat a comfort meal to raise my spirits. This works, but the longer lasting effects just makes me feel even worse. This negative feedback turns into even more, and I’m practically stuck here until I can find a way to enjoy my passion again.
Entering a positive feedback loop (consistently)
Armed with this information, the only logical thing to ponder from here is, “How do I get into a positive feedback loop?”
This is tricky. Getting into a negative loop is easy. A positive loop is harder because so many people don’t understand what makes them happy. If you can’t find what makes you happy, then staying in a loop of positivity is nearly impossible. Entering it is easy, but sooner or later, you’ll always get thrown clear and will be trying to claw your way back in.
Find your reason for getting up in the morning. Then, do it relentlessly. Find similar hobbies to supplement your passion. I love to travel, so I found other hobbies that go hand-in-hand: photography, hiking, languages, blogging, sharing adventures, etc.
Once you have a passion that’s propelling you into the loop, you can fuel that fire by completing other goals you set for yourself. Keep you goals attainable and within reason, so completing them releases more dopamine, and the cycle repeats. This is the key to entering a positive feedback loop. Don’t feel bad about getting thrown out of the loop, because it’s much easier to find your way back in a second (or third, or 100th) time.