Getting Started When You Don’t Feel Like It: Mastering Task Initiation and Self-Activation
Author: Kimberly Tierney, Director of Academic Coaching
Read time: 5 minutes
This content was aided by the OpenAI language model Assistant. Learn more at https://openai.com.
What Is Task Initiation (or Self-Activation)?
If you’ve ever stared at your laptop knowing that you have a paper you should start, a reading assignment you should do, or a math problem set you should finish, you know what difficulties with task initiation feel like.
Task initiation, sometimes called self-activation, is the ability to get started with a task, especially one you don’t find interesting, easy, or urgent. It’s one of the core executive functioning skills that helps you move from intention to action. When it’s working well, it looks like this: you sit down, open your laptop, and begin your work without too much internal resistance. When it’s not, you may find yourself reorganizing your desk, scrolling social media, or convincing yourself you’ll “feel more ready later.”
In short, task initiation, or self-activation, is your brain’s ability to create its own internal pressure…to do something because you decided to, not because someone else is reminding, nagging, or rewarding you.
Why Getting Started Is So Hard
There are a lot of reasons students struggle with self-activation—and most have nothing to do with laziness.
Sometimes, we don’t start because:
We don’t know where to start. The task feels vague, or we’re unsure what the first step is.
We don’t want to stop doing something more enjoyable. Task initiation often requires stopping a fun activity before starting a less-fun one.
The task feels too easy or too boring. If it doesn’t challenge us, our brains don’t release much dopamine—the neurotransmitter that helps with motivation.
The task feels too hard or overwhelming. The bigger or more unclear a task feels, the harder it is to begin.
We only have two time zones: “Now” and “Not Now.” Especially for students with ADHD or executive functioning challenges, “time blindness” can make future deadlines feel abstract until they suddenly become right now.
And sometimes, procrastination is a form of self-protection. If you put off studying and don’t do well, you can tell yourself, “I didn’t fail, I just didn’t try.” If you do well, you get to believe, “I’m smart enough to pull it off last-minute.” Either way, your confidence feels safe.
Understanding this helps us shift the narrative. It’s not that you’re “unmotivated,” it’s that you’re having trouble activating for a task that feels too easy, too hard, or too far away.
Awareness vs. Motivation: The Two-Headed Monster
Psychologist and ADHD expert Dr. Ari Tuckman describes procrastination as a “two-headed monster.” One head represents lack of awareness (“I didn’t realize how much time had passed”), and the other represents lack of motivation (“I know I should, but I don’t want to”).
You can address awareness with strategies like reminders, timers, and planners—but awareness alone doesn’t create action.
Tuckman tells a story of someone who stayed up late every night working on his computer. To fix it, he set his lights on a timer to turn off at 11 p.m. It worked… until he got really good at working in the dark. So, he added a second layer of motivation: an alarm upstairs where his baby was sleeping that went off at 11:10pm. Now, when the lights turned off, he wanted to stop working, because he knew he had 10 minutes before the alarm would wake up his family.
That’s the key: successful strategies address both awareness (noticing when to start or stop) and motivation (wanting to follow through).
How to Get Yourself Started
Here are some of the tools and strategies we use with students at Tierney Education to strengthen task initiation and build self-activation muscles:
🧠 1. Begin with the End in Mind
Instead of obsessing over the first step, visualize the last step. What will it look like when you’re done? How will you feel? Think about how you’ll feel in as much detail as possible. This taps into your brain’s emotional system, helping you anticipate the positive feeling of being finished.
⏳ 2. Shrink the First Step
Big tasks feel safer to avoid. Break them down into micro-steps: “Open my notes,” “Title the document,” or “Write one paragraph.” You can even set a five-minute timer as an “experiment.” Most of the time, once you start, momentum takes over.
💬 3. Challenge Your Thoughts
Replace unhelpful thoughts like “I have to write this entire essay tonight” with more concrete first steps: “I just need to get a rough draft started.” Or, “I don’t have to feel motivated to begin, motivation comes after I start.”
🎯 4. Use Future Forecasting
Since our brains often only see “Now” and “Not Now,” try to feel the future sooner.
Set small, immediate rewards (“I’ll get coffee once I finish this section”).
Ask someone to check in for accountability.
Set external consequences—ideally ones that are immediate and undesirable if you don’t follow through (for example, donating to a rival sports team’s fundraiser).
⚖️ 5. Balance Internal and External Pressure
External motivators (deadlines, reminders, accountability) are helpful, but your long-term goal is to build internal pressure: the satisfaction of doing something because it aligns with who you want to be.
Remind yourself:
“I want to be the kind of student who finishes work early.”
“I like feeling organized and responsible.”
“I don’t enjoy the stress of last-minute work.”
Over time, these internal messages start to feel as motivating as external deadlines. How we talk to ourselves matters!
🌱 6. Reflect and Refine
After completing a task, take a minute to ask:
How long did that really take?
What helped me get started?
What would I do differently next time?
Reflection transforms experiences into data. There’s no failure, only feedback.
The Takeaway
Getting started isn’t just about willpower. It’s about awareness, structure, and emotion—learning how to activate yourself when there’s no one else doing the pushing.
Self-activation is a skill, and like any skill, it can be taught, practiced, and strengthened. The more you practice these strategies, the more confident you become—and that confidence builds even more motivation. Success breeds success!
At Tierney Education, we help students bridge the gap between intention and action, turning “I’ll do it later” into “I’m already on it.”
