Editor’s Note: This refreshed post was originally written by Kevan Lee in December of 2013, was revamped and updated for currency and comprehensiveness by Willa Rubin in 2017 — and again in 2019.
I spent an hour on this opening paragraph.
The hour wasn’t time well spent, mind you. Sure, I was working — writing, deleting, tinkering with words here and there — but my one-paragraph-per-hour pace wasn’t out of indecisiveness as much as a lack of motivation.
I spent five minutes on email, ten minutes on Instagram, and fifteen minutes doing who-knows-what on Tumblr. (Just kidding, I know exactly what I was doing: watching cat videos.)
Sound familiar?
Motivation is a tricky thing to corral. Tricky, but not impossible.