Activation energy: How to start any habit (even when you're tired and unmotivated)
The most overlooked and necessary concept of all
🏷️ Categories: Habits, Procrastination, Motivation.
Most people don’t fail at changing habits because they lack desire.
They fail because they don’t get past the first 5 minutes.
We all want to improve many things in our lives: study more, exercise, eat better, launch that project that’s been in our minds for a while, read more instead of wasting the afternoon scrolling… We know it clearly, but starting is hard.
The couch is too comfortable to get up and go running.
Ultra-processed food tastes better than vegetables.
Scrolling is so easy and fun that reading becomes difficult.
If you look closely, the problem is almost never the “during.”
When you finally make the effort and begin, you usually enter a flow state.
When you finally make it to the gym, you finish your workout.
When you finally decide to cook something healthy, eating it isn’t so bad.
When you finally open the book, it turns out to be an interesting story.
The real problem is always the same: the start.
That initial stretch where we always say “later” or “tomorrow.” In chemistry, this initial effort has a name: activation energy. In your life, it feels like a huge resistance to doing things you rationally know you want to do.
You don’t need great willpower if you understand activation energy.
In reality, stopping procrastination is simple.
Activation energy
The first major challenge we face each day when doing something is getting activated.
In chemistry, a reaction doesn’t start by chance: it begins when a specific activation threshold is reached. Before that threshold, nothing happens. It’s like bringing a match close to a damp log: without enough heat, there will be no fire.
When you finally surpass that threshold, something suddenly changes.
Molecules reorganize, the reaction ignites, and now the system flows toward a more stable state. You don’t need to maintain that level of energy permanently; once activation has happened, the reaction can continue even without adding more energy. It feels like climbing a hill with great effort and then rolling downhill.
If you think about it, your daily life is full of reactions.
Many never occur simply because you don’t reach the necessary activation threshold. Every habit has its own activation energy—let’s look at a few examples:
Think of writing 1,000 words versus writing 100.
Or doing 60 minutes of exercise versus just 10 minutes.
Both actions are “possible,” but they don’t have the same initial energy cost.
Many people fall in love with the end of the reaction—having a book, having a stronger body—but forget the most important part: the activation. The height of the hill you must climb each day just to begin. If you procrastinate like an expert, it may be because you demand reactions that require an absurd amount of energy.
You’re not failing—you’re just trying to light a wet log with a single match.
Flip it around: ignite dry leaves with a blowtorch.
Activators
The habits that transform your life are the ones that are impossible to refuse.
Think of the difference between “I’ll do 100 push-ups a day” and “I’ll do 1 push-up a day.”
The 100-push-up version sounds better, yes, but its activation energy is high: it requires more time, strength, and a reasonable amount of motivation.
The minimal version, on the other hand, is ridiculously easy: you can do it in jeans, in your bathroom, or while waiting for the elevator.
That’s the trick: once you’re used to doing 1 push-up, it’s way too easy to do 2.
Once you open your journal to write the sentence of the day, you’re more likely to end up writing a paragraph. Over time, a paragraph may feel too little to capture everything you did today. With time, journaling becomes natural.
The final result is the same, but the initial effort is infinitely smaller.
Many people start changes that not even an expert could maintain long-term. If you want to use your activation energy effectively, phrase your habits like this: “What is the version of this so small that it would be almost ridiculous not to do it?” (Babauta, 2021).
Read one page, not a chapter.
Write one paragraph, not a page.
Go for a short walk, don’t aim for 10,000 steps.
If you maintain your activating habit, soon it will feel natural, and you’ll be able to gradually increase the intensity of the habit to the level you want without feeling that it becomes harder each time. To do it successfully, the increase must be very gentle.
Make activation always happen, and let the energy spread from there.
Facilitators
If you want to lower activation energy even more, modify your environment.
In chemistry, a reaction can be drastically altered just by changing pressure, humidity, or ambient temperature. The same happens to us.
If you want to write every day, it’s not the same to come home and find your laptop hidden in a backpack, the desk full of clutter, and the sofa calling you with Netflix, as it is to enter a room with a clean desk, the laptop on the table, and no TV in sight. In the first case, writing has extremely high activation energy. In the second, sitting down to write is intuitive.
Same with working out: leaving your running shoes visible and your clothes ready the night before is a facilitator. Having everything messy and the gym 40 minutes away by car is a huge obstacle.
If changing is hard for you, redesign your environment to make activation easier.
Intermediate reactions
In chemistry, many reactions don’t go from A to B directly—they go from A to X to B.
Maybe paying for the gym doesn’t bother you. Maybe you even like training. The problem is that driving 30 minutes during rush hour is hell. Or maybe you hate exercising surrounded by strangers. Suddenly you see that you’re not resisting “working out”—you’re resisting driving at 9:00 a.m. or being exposed to others’ gazes.
The solution?
Lower the activation energy at that exact point.
Going to train very early to avoid traffic or building a home routine makes that specific intermediate step so easy that going from waking up to training feels instantaneous. Less energy and time wasted, more likelihood of success in your new habit. Make it so easy that procrastination becomes impossible.
The final result is the same, but the overall process becomes maximally simple.
The chemistry of habit
Now you have a simple way to apply the activation-energy model:
Start ridiculously small: Choose a version of your habit you can do even half-asleep. If you need motivation to do it, it’s still too big—simplify further.
Turn up the volume very slowly: When activation becomes automatic (this may take from a few weeks to a few months), add 5–10% more each month.
Assume you’ll fail… and design the rebound: Don’t think about never failing; think about not failing twice in a row, because that’s exactly what makes us abandon habits. If you break the chain today, you must already know what your “minimum version” will be for tomorrow.
Reduce the activation energy of intermediate steps: Every reaction (habit) has intermediate steps. Find the exact point where you struggle and reduce the energy. Reduce that step, eliminate it, or replace it.
With the activation model, you’ll stop procrastinating and do what you want to do.
Even when you’re tired.
Even when you’re distracted.
Even when you’re unmotivated.
Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to dig deeper:
How to maintain habits without failing: Why some people persist and others quit
Two Harvard Scientists Reveal Why We Procrastinate (and How to Avoid It)
✍️ Your turn: What would be the ridiculously small version of your next habit that would make it impossible for you to say no?
💭 Quote of the day: “My advice is: never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of your time. Catch her!” — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
See you in the next letter! 👋
References 📚
Babauta, L. (2021). The Habit Guide: Zen Habits’ Effective Habit Methods + Solutions: Zen Habits’.