I’ve been lacking motivation recently, lacking the drive to do all the things I want to do. So I don’t do things.

That makes me depressed that I haven’t gotten anything done. So I get even more demotivated. So I don’t do more things.

This spiral is a bad place to be in. I’m trying to get out. I’m going to set goals to work out on specific days (MWF). I’m setting measurable deadlines for things to get done in both my work and my personal life. I’m going to set goals to reach out to my friends more often, because being with friends always motivates me.

And I’m going to try to get less depressed when things don’t go right. I think that’s been part of the problem, when things go poorly I take it too hard on myself.

I’m a scientist, the hallmark of science is that while we can predict what may happen, we then have to test it through experiments. If our experiments go a certain way, then our prediction was wrong and we have to find out what to do now. That’s just part of science, it’s all part of the process.

But when my experiments aren’t going as I expected them to, I take it too personally. I haven’t yet learned enough how to step back and just accept it, just find out what happened, alter the conditions, and revise the predictions. Instead I keep wondering if I myself am to blame, and if I myself and uniquely unqualified to do this job I’ve been doing my entire adult life.

What makes people successful isn’t just a single moment of brilliance, but a determination to keep being brilliant, which takes work. Whether its physical determination, mental fortitude in the case of adversity, or what have you, success if a pattern of behavior, not a lottery ticket.

And I need to remember that and act like that. It won’t help me if I just get things right once and then rest on my laurels, that won’t bring success. And likewise it won’t help me to mope about whenever I get things wrong.

This is all something that I’m sure everyone deals with, no one needs me to tell them, but it’s something I want to tell myself and I feel like writing it down is the best way to do that.

I need to keep going, keep trying, and keep acting like this matters, even in the face of failure. Letting every failure spiral me further into depression is just a recipe for more failure.