two types of fuel

Saturday morning. Dark ambient in my headphones, black coffee with a glass of sparkling water on the side of my desk. The idea for this essay popped randomly into my head one day during the week, late at night.

I’ve been working a lot lately. I’ve spent more time in the “flow” state during the last week than in the couple of months prior. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten there. As with everything in our lives, there is seasonality in my creative output.

I’ve been reflecting on questions: “What drives me? What drives other people to do what they do? Where do we get our energy from?”

Despite all the complexity that’s hidden in the details, I believe that on a fundamental level it all comes down to just two things: inspiration or desperation.

You can be inspired to do stuff. You have positive motivation.

Or you can be desperate, so you have to do stuff. You have negative motivation.

That’s your fuel. Both can serve you at different stages of your life.

This concept can also help you know yourself better. When you don’t feel like working, despite being an overall disciplined person, you can simply ask yourself: “Where is my energy coming from right now? If there is no energy, maybe there is no fuel left in the tank?”

Let’s say you have financial troubles, so you need to find a job to make money and survive. There are people who depend on you. You are desperate and driven by negative motivation.

You may feel fear or pressure. You may be scared of an uncertain future. That’s your fuel.

You get a job and you start hustling to escape that. You don’t find that job particularly interesting, but it pays your bills and helps you avoid pain.

Time passes, you save money and make some more on the side. Now you have good savings, you can take care of yourself and your family, you feel safe.

So now there is no pain you felt in the first place. There is no financial pressure, no fear.

But this job is still not really that interesting to you. You don’t see any personal growth or career opportunities there. You never had inspiration in the first place. And the desperation that was your primary fuel has disappeared.

What would you feel at that moment? Procrastination, laziness, lack of interest, apathy.

Is it a problem? Not really. If you are a healthy person, there is always something you feel inspired by. That comes down to your worldview, your values, your idea of yourself in this world.

So a state like this is a signal. It tells you that you have no fuel left for this. You need to change something up.

Lots of people are driven by negative motivation for most of their lives. The moment they are financially secure or have achieved some sort of “success” in their work — they feel no drive to do more. They start asking themselves existential questions.

I know a young guy who found his success early. He built a dev agency and started making decent money — enough for his lifestyle, to live a good life. And there was no drive to do more. He got complacent pretty fast. When business slowed down, he felt pressure — and that’s what gave him the motivation to start working harder again.

There’s also a reason why some people who go through a “spiritual awakening” can feel a loss of motivation.

There are lots of people who are driven by ego, by external validation, by a constant urge to prove they are worthy of something to others.

But after some deep spiritual experience — and it’s highly individual from person to person — one can reflect on their life and realize that all the motivation they had before is shallow. It makes no sense, it serves no purpose.

In that moment the person has lost their primary drivers, but hasn’t yet built new ones — based on inspiration and positive motivation.

And they get to the same state: no fuel left in the tank.

Me personally — why do I even write this essay? I don’t make any money from it, so it has no financial incentive. I have no fear or pressure from outside work to produce these writings.

But I get deep inspiration from it. I feel passionate about building my body of work and documenting my journey in this form.

And for me that’s enough to feel motivated to sit on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and write, even if no other person ever reads this.