How to get motivated to work out when you don't feel like it

The most reliable way to get motivated to work out is to start before you feel like it: promise yourself ten easy minutes and let the motivation catch up once you're moving, because that's usually when it shows up. Then stack the odds in your favor. Pair exercise with something you enjoy, choose a kind of exercise you don't dread, and make plans with someone who'll notice if you bail.

Your brain judges the workout by its worst five minutes

Before a workout, you picture the start: stiff legs, heavy breathing, the first squat that feels like a bad idea. That preview is rigged. In a 2011 paper, Ruby, Dunn and colleagues ran four studies with 279 adults and found that people consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy exercising, across yoga, Pilates, aerobic exercise and weight training. Their explanation is called forecasting myopia: people give too much weight to the beginning of a workout, which is usually the least pleasant part.

So "I don't feel like it" is a prediction, and a bad one. You're reviewing the whole movie based on the opening credits. The same paper showed the bias can be worked around, and that suggests three moves:

• Put your favorite part first. If you like the bike more than the squats, warm up on the bike. A better opening makes the forecast better.
• Picture the whole session, not the start. The middle, when you've warmed up, and the end, walking out with a clear head.
• Keep a one-line log after each workout. "Dreaded it, felt good after ten minutes." On the next bad day, read it: your own data against your brain's forecast.

And when even that doesn't work, stop asking your brain for a forecast at all. Give it a first step so small it doesn't need one.

The ten-minute deal

This is the deal you make with yourself on bad days:

1. Put on your workout clothes. That's the whole first step.
2. Start at an easy pace, slower than you think you should.
3. After ten minutes, you're allowed to stop. Guilt-free, no speeches.

What the ten minutes can look like: a brisk walk around the block, the first exercise of your usual program, a bodyweight circuit in the living room, or an easy spin on the bike. Pick it in advance, so the deal doesn't start with a decision.

Most days you'll keep going, because the hard part was starting. Some days you'll stop at ten, and that has to be allowed, or your brain will see through the deal by next week. Those ten minutes still count: the World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines dropped the old rule that activity had to come in bouts of at least ten minutes, and they state plainly that doing some physical activity is better than doing none. More ways to fit it in: how to exercise with no time.

Bundle the workout with something you want

Katherine Milkman calls it temptation bundling: you only get the thing you crave while you're doing the thing you avoid. In a 2014 study with Julia Minson and Kevin Volpp, participants who could only listen to page-turner audiobooks (the paper's title name-checks The Hunger Games) on iPods kept at the gym went to the gym 51% more often than a control group at first. People who were simply encouraged to save their audiobooks for the gym went 29% more. The effect faded over time, especially after the Thanksgiving break, but when the study ended, 61% of participants chose to pay to keep the gym-only setup.

Ways to bundle:

• A podcast or audiobook you only play while you train.
• The series you only watch on the treadmill or the stationary bike.
• Your favorite coffee, only on the way home from the gym.
• The weekly call with a friend, done while walking.

Make the rule strict. If the show is also available on the couch, the couch wins. And remember what the study showed: bundling gets you started, but it fades. Pair it with a fixed schedule, like the one in how to go to the gym consistently.

Pick exercise you don't hate

You don't have to love it. You do have to not dread it, and that matters more than it sounds. In a 2015 systematic review of 24 studies, Rhodes and Kates found that feeling better during moderate-intensity exercise was linked to doing more physical activity later, while how people felt afterward wasn't. The feeling during the session is what your brain remembers when it decides whether there will be a next one.

What to do with that:

• Start from what you liked as a kid. Swimming, dancing, biking, a ball sport. Childhood preferences are free market research.
• Keep most sessions at an effort where you can still talk. Save the brutal ones for the days you actually want them.
• Give three different activities two weeks each before you conclude that you hate exercise. A bad first impression is often just the first five minutes again.
• Change the setting before you quit. Same workout, different place, different time, different playlist.

Bring a witness

Plans with another person are much harder to cancel than plans in your head. A friend waiting outside the gym at 7 a.m., a class where the instructor knows your name, a running group that notices when you're missing: each one turns "maybe" into an appointment. Pick someone more reliable than you are on a bad day, or the two of you will cancel together and call it teamwork.

The witness doesn't have to be a person, either. Toxic Coach does this job with goals: set "gym by 7 p.m." and the reminders get meaner as the deadline gets closer. If you have an excuse, you can tell your coach and find out whether it holds up.

Motivation tricks that backfire

• The punishment workout. Destroying yourself on day one is a great way to guarantee there's no day two. Remember the review above: how the session feels predicts the next one.
• Hype as fuel. A motivational video gives you about fifteen minutes of energy, which you'll spend watching another motivational video.
• Waiting for Monday. A fresh start feels great and costs you a week; why you always start on Monday explains the trap.
• Making motivation the plan. Motivation is a nice bonus when it shows up. A schedule is the plan; discipline vs. motivation goes deeper on why.

When it isn't about motivation

If you've lost interest in things you used to enjoy, or you feel exhausted no matter how much you sleep, that isn't a motivation problem, and none of these tricks will fix it. Please talk to a doctor: low energy and low mood have causes worth checking, and they deserve real help, not a pep talk. If you're struggling right now, you'll find helplines on our support page.

Do the first ten minutes today

Not tomorrow, not Monday. Put on your shoes, set a ten-minute timer and walk out the door, or start a ten-minute workout in your living room. Then decide whether to keep going. You'll probably want to, but that's not even the point. The point is that today counted.