How to Get Motivated to Exercise When You Don't Feel Like It

Motivation comes and goes for everyone. It's easy on a sunny Saturday and scarce after a long workday. What carries you through those evenings is a plan you made on a good day. Each step below comes with the study behind it, and what that study doesn't show.

Why motivation fades

Exercise costs you now and pays off later. People tend to put off tasks like that. Economists have a model for it: someone with a bias toward the present who doesn't see it in themselves keeps putting off tasks whose costs come now and whose rewards come later (O'Donoghue and Rabin, 1999). That describes most of us on a cold Tuesday evening.

So the useful question is how to move on the days the feeling is missing. Each step below is one answer.

1. Decide when and where you'll exercise

Write down the day, the time and the place for each session this week. "Tuesday, 7 a.m., the loop around the park" is the level of detail to aim for.

In a two-week study of 248 people, information about the health risks of inactivity raised how much people intended to exercise, and it didn't change how much they did. The group that also wrote down when and where they would exercise did exercise more; the authors called the effect dramatic (Milne, Orbell and Sheeran, 2002). The study lasted two weeks, so it says nothing about the months after.

Put the sessions in your calendar the way you'd put in a meeting. When something clashes, move the session to another slot that week.

2. Pick a weekly goal you'll keep

A weekly total gives you room. If Wednesday falls apart, Thursday or Saturday can make up the minutes, and the week still counts. Across six studies, people preferred goals with a few emergency reserves built in, and they stuck with them longer (Sharif and Shu, 2017). Those studies were about goals other than exercise.

Set the number where you'll keep it, and raise it later. The World Health Organization's guidelines say some activity is better than none, and that adults who aren't there yet should start small and build up how often, how long and how hard they move. For reference, the guidelines for adults are 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 to 150 of vigorous (Bull et al., 2020).

Ninety minutes a week is three 30-minute sessions. Sixty is two. Either is a good place to start. Our guide to how much cardio a week you can realistically maintain goes further.

3. Make starting easy

The hardest part of a workout is often the first five minutes. Make them easy:

• Lay out your clothes and shoes the night before.
• Agree with yourself to do ten minutes. If you want to stop after ten, stop. Those ten minutes still count.
• Pick something you can start from your front door: a walk, a run or a ride.
• Keep one short fallback for low days, like a 20-minute walk.

4. Plan for the week you miss

Everyone misses a week sooner or later. What you do the week after matters most.

In a megastudy of 61,293 gym members that tested 54 four-week ideas side by side, the one that did best gave a small reward for coming back after a missed workout (Milkman et al., 2021). Seeing a broken streak made people less likely to keep going, and being able to repair it softened that (Silverman and Barasch, 2023).

So decide now what a missed week means: one week, followed by the next one. Put your next session in the calendar the day you notice the miss. There's more on this in how to stay consistent with exercise when life gets busy.

5. Put something on the line

People weigh a loss more heavily than a gain of the same size. In the words of the 1979 paper that set out prospect theory, losses loom larger than gains (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). That's useful for exercise.

In a trial of 281 adults with a goal of 7,000 steps a day, one group got $42 at the start of each month and lost $1.40 for each day they missed. They hit the goal on 45% of days. With the same $1.40 paid as a reward for each day hit, it was 35%. With no money, 30% (Patel et al., 2016).

Money you put on yourself can keep working after the incentive ends, too. Workers who were also offered a contract with their own money on it were still going to the company gym more a year after the payments ended (Royer, Stehr and Sydnor, 2015).

What the studies don't show: the step trial was one employer for 13 weeks, and once the money stopped, steps fell back to the same as no money at all. People who choose a contract may differ from those who don't: at the gym, people already going were the likeliest to sign one. More on the research in loss aversion and fitness.

There are a few ways to put money on a goal. stickK, Beeminder and Forfeit each do it differently, and our comparison sets them side by side.

steps.org is a game built on this idea. You pick your weekly activity minutes and connect Strava. Your monthly price starts at $0. Miss a week and it goes up $5; hit one and it comes down $2.50. Keep it at $0: that's the game. How it works shows each part beside the research behind it.

Before you start

If you have a heart condition, are pregnant or injured, or were told to limit exercise, ask your doctor before you pick a goal. Nothing here is medical advice.

Questions people ask

Why do I have no motivation to exercise?

Often because the cost comes now and the payoff comes later, and on a busy evening the payoff feels far away. A plan, a small weekly goal and a stake on the miss all move the decision to a moment when you feel like making it. If low motivation comes with low mood that lasts for weeks, talk to your doctor.

How do I get motivated to work out when I'm tired?

Lower the bar for that day. A ten-minute walk is movement, and you can stop there. Move the planned session to a day with more energy in the same week.

How much exercise should I aim for?

Start with what you'll keep, then build up. The WHO's guidelines for adults are 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 to 150 of vigorous, and they say some activity is better than none.

Does putting money on it work?

In trials, money framed as a loss got more people moving while it ran. In the step trial the effect faded once the money stopped, which is why steps.org has no end date: it runs until you cancel it.