Hey besties! Do you ever feel like this? Your New Year’s resolutions 🌿 are already wilted by the end of the month? You got a gym membership 🏋️♀️ and only went three times before it started collecting dust? You wanted to learn a skill 💻, downloaded N apps, but only ever opened the homepage? Every time you start you’re full of energy, thinking “This time I’ll definitely do it!” But halfway through, or even before that, your enthusiasm cools down, your motivation disappears, and you quietly give up, then fall into deep self-doubt: Is this just how I am forever? Am I naturally less disciplined than others? Am I just not cut out for this?! 😭😭😭
I feel you, besties! This feeling is SO! SO! SO! familiar! I used to be the same way. Life felt like an unfinished building 🏗️; everything started with a bang and ended with a whimper. It wasn’t until I figured out the underlying logic of those “one-move instant solutions” that I realized WTF! This isn’t about you not being effortful enough or not being disciplined enough! You’re just stepping into those invisible “giving up traps”! And you haven’t mastered the “instant solution” method to avoid them!
Today! I’m going to use my ‘One-Move Instant Solve’ technique to tell you, hand-in-hand (okay, mouth-to-ear), what the real reasons are behind always being “one step away from the finish line,” and how to use the simplest, most direct methods to bypass them completely, or even turn them into boosters for you to sprint towards the end! 🚀
Listen up, the reason you give up halfway is usually not a physical or intellectual problem. It’s these fatal ‘Mindset Bugs’ and their corresponding ‘Instant Solve Patches’!
Fatal Bug ❌ & Instant Solve Patch ✅
- Bug 1: Your goal is vague, distant, or so huge you can’t even see the boundary!
- Manifestation: You say you want to “lose weight,” “make a lot of money,” “become an expert in your field.” Sounds ambitious, but how much is “lose weight”? How much is “a lot of money”? How expert is “expert”? These aren’t clearly defined. Or the goal is so massive it’s like climbing Mount Everest, and you’re standing on flat ground. You look up and can’t even see the summit, naturally feeling powerless and despairing.
- Painful Truth: The brain naturally resists uncertainty and overly long processes. When goals are vague and massive, it triggers a self-preservation mechanism – giving up – because it perceives it as an impossible task, and continuing would just waste resources.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Find the ‘Why’ that makes you ‘all-in’ + Slice the elephant to feed the ants!
- Find Your Why: Stop and ask yourself honestly: Why do I really want to lose weight? Is it for health? To wear nice clothes? To regain confidence? Why do I want to make a lot of money? Is it for freedom? To provide a better life for family? This “Why” must be something you deeply desire from within, something that evokes emotional resonance! It’s not for others; it’s for YOU! Write it down and put it somewhere visible on your phone. Look at it when you’re lost; it’s an instant recharge 🔋! This is your ‘North Star’; don’t lose direction!
- Slice the Elephant: Okay, big direction set. Now brutally break down that distant goal into countless! Countless! Tiny, almost imperceptible “next steps”! For instance, “lose 10 pounds” – the first step isn’t “run for 1 hour daily.” It’s “drink a glass of water first thing tomorrow morning” or “eat two fewer mouthfuls of rice at lunch сегодня.” Learning a programming language? The first step is “open that tutorial app” or even just “google how to print ‘Hello World’ in this language”! Break the “finish line” into countless “next stops” that you can reach on tiptoes. Just focus on this one small step in front of you. Complete it, then immediately move to the next small step. Don’t think about the full marathon; just think about running the next 100 meters. Your brain won’t feel like it’s a mission impossible anymore; instead, it will think, “Hey, this seems doable!” Accomplishment is built step-by-step.
- Bug 2: You’re tightly binding ‘action’ and ’emotion’! You feel you can’t start if you don’t feel motivated or in the mood!
- Manifestation: “I’m tired today, don’t want to move.” “Not in the mood to study, I’ll wait until inspiration strikes.” “My body doesn’t feel right, going to the gym would be pointless.” You’re always waiting for that moment when the “feeling is right,” waiting until you’re bursting with energy and motivation.
- Painful Truth: In real life, the chance of being constantly full of energy and motivation is lower than winning the lottery! Motivation is never the reason to start acting; on the contrary, action is the source of motivation! The less you want to move, the less motivated you’ll be; the more you force yourself to start, even if you only do something minuscule, your brain will release dopamine, giving you a little reward of “I guess I can do this,” and motivation will slowly start to build.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Don’t wait for the feeling, just move! Activate your ‘5-Minute Rule’ or ‘Minimum Viable Action’!
- 5-Minute Rule: Don’t think about it, just force yourself! Do it for just 5 minutes! Don’t want to write that report? just write for 5 minutes, even if it’s just the title and the first sentence. Don’t want to exercise? just put on your clothes and walk outside for 5 minutes? Don’t want to read? just open the book and read for 5 minutes? The magic is that often, once you start for those 5 minutes, you get into the flow, and you’ll naturally want to continue. Even if you only do 5 minutes, it’s still better than 0! This is how you trick your brain into thinking, “Oh, it’s not that hard after all!”
- Minimum Viable Action: Set your “next step” so small it’s “impossible to refuse”! Running 5k is too hard? Just run out the door! Cleaning the whole room feels overwhelming? Just tidy one corner of your desk! Want to write a 10,000 characters essay? Just write 100 characters, or even just outline it? Lower the barrier to entry to the absolute minimum! So low that even if you’re physically uncomfortable and mentally resistant, you can easily complete it! Remember, starting is the hardest part. Once you start, momentum will push you forward!
- Bug 3: You focus too much on the final ‘result’ and completely forget to enjoy the ‘process’ along the way and those tiny ‘improvements’!
- Manifestation: You only see the “number on the scale after losing 10 pounds,” the “extra zeroes in your bank account,” the “moment you get a certain certificate.” If you don’t see these “big results” quickly, you feel like you’re stuck, wasting time, and then you want to give up.
- Painful Truth: Any worthwhile achievement requires time to accumulate and mature. Staring only at the finish line makes the process seem incredibly long and tedious. Plus, most of the time you are in the process, but you ignore the growth and changes happening within the process. It’s like a long-distance run; if you only stare at the finish line the whole way, every step will feel like torture; but if you occasionally look at the scenery around you and pay attention to your breathing rhythm, you’ll find that the process itself has meaning.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Set ‘process mini-goals’, sprinkle flowers on the roadside scenery! Use a ‘Progress Journal’ to record your tiny highlights!
- Process Mini-Goals: Besides the final goal, set some process-based, quantifiable “micro-goals” for yourself. For example: not “lose 10 pounds,” but “eat healthily for 7 days this week,” “run 100 meters further than last time,” “complete a small coding exercise today,” “finish this chapter of the book.” These are your “milestones” along the road. Every time you reach one, give yourself a small reward, a psychological hint, or even a physical treat (like a small snack, buy a small item you fancy)! Make your motivation for running not just the distant 10 pounds, but reaching a certain landmark or finishing a song!
- Progress Journal: Spend a minute every day or week recording even the tiniest bit of progress you made on this task. Even though I didn’t run 5k as planned today, I at least walked for 20 minutes! Even though I didn’t finish the report today, I organized all the materials! Even though learning was difficult today, I found a key concept I didn’t know! These “micro-victories” accumulate to give you tremendous psychological support: “Look, I’m not staying still! I’m getting a little better every day!” This positive feedback is the nuclear power for continuing 🔋!
- Bug 4: You have zero tolerance for ‘imperfection’, and once you don’t meet your “ideal state,” you invalidate everything!
- Manifestation: Said you’d exercise for 30 minutes daily, but only did 15 minutes today? Disaster, plan failed! Forget it, I’ll just completely lie flat today! Said you’d finish a chapter today but got interrupted and only wrote half? Ugh, so inefficient, totally useless! Since I didn’t do well today, I’ll just give up on this thing entirely!
- Painful Truth: Perfection is the biggest enemy of ‘completion’! Real life is full of unexpected events, distractions, and fluctuations in state. Aiming for 100% perfect execution of a plan is like demanding the Earth always stay at the same temperature – unrealistic! Once you fall off the perfect track, you easily fall into the “what’s the point” mode because you feel since it’s already imperfect, trying harder is meaningless.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Remember: Completion, by far, outweighs perfection! Activate your ‘Interruption Handling Mechanism’!
- Completion > Perfection: This concept must be etched into your brain! It’s better to complete a small, imperfect task every day than to chase perfection and stay stuck at the beginning or give up entirely! Your first design draft can be a sketch, your first written piece can be full of typos, your first run can be mixed with walking… It doesn’t matter! As long as you keep doing it, they will slowly evolve! Remember, completing a rough version is a million times better than a perfect version only in your head!
- Interruption Handling Mechanism: Accept that life will have interruptions and detours. The key isn’t to not be interrupted, but to quickly get back on track after being interrupted. It’s not “I didn’t achieve my goal today, so today is wasted,” but “I only achieved part of my goal today, that’s okay, I’ll continue with the rest or the next step tomorrow.” See deviations as normal, and treat quick recovery as the goal! For example, your habit is to write every morning, but today you had an emergency interruption. Don’t think “I can’t write today, disaster,” but think “Then I’ll spare 15 minutes at noon or night to make up a bit of today’s portion.” Acknowledge that imperfection is part of the process; don’t let one mistake ruin the entire plan!
- Bug 5: You’re fighting alone, no one is cheering you on, no one understands your struggle!
- Manifestation: At first, you can motivate yourself, but as time goes on, you encounter difficulties, you’re tired, no one understands, no one supports you, maybe some people even pour cold water on you. You feel like a clown 🎭, performing on an empty stage, with no applause, only echoes.
- Painful Truth: Humans are social creatures; even the strongest person needs support and connection. Executing a goal already requires willpower, and if you don’t feel seen, encouraged, or able to confide your difficulties during the process, the depletion of willpower will increase exponentially, making it easier to burn out.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Find your ‘Teammates’ or your ‘Confidant’! Build an ‘External Support System’!
- Find Teammates: Grab a friend with a similar goal to do it together! Supervise each other, encourage each other, share progress and difficulties. Check in together, complain together, celebrate small victories together. Sometimes, knowing that someone is fighting alongside you, and seeing them persist when you’re tired, is the greatest motivation! Form a WeChat group, a Bilibili group, a Douban group, whatever works! Or find a coach or mentor, even paying a bit is fine; they can give you professional guidance and continuous push.
- Build Your Confidant: If you don’t want to do it with someone else, at least find someone or somewhere you can vent, someone who can understand your struggles. It could be your partner, your best friend, or an online anonymous community. It could even be writing a diary or recording voice notes! Say or write down your worries, your fatigue, your small achievements. Allowing emotions to flow will prevent them from paralyzing you. Being understood and seen is itself a huge source of strength.
- Bug 6: You see ‘rest’ as laziness and stagnation, not allocating time to charge your battery 🔋!
- Manifestation: You feel you must work non-stop to catch up to others and achieve your goals. Rest? That’s a luxury you can only enjoy after success! So you stay up late, overspend your energy, work back-to-back, and end up exhausted, either getting sick or developing a strong aversion to the task, completely unwilling to touch it again.
- Painful Truth: Willpower, energy, and creativity are finite resources; they get depleted! Working for long periods without rest is not only inefficient but also leads to burnout, which is the number one killer of long-term projects! Both the brain and body need a landing strip for maintenance and recharging. Effective rest is the foundation for continuous progress, not a stumbling block.
- Instant Solve Patch ✅: Pause for a better sprint! Schedule ‘Rest’ and ‘Recovery’ into your plan!
- Planned Rest: Don’t wait until you’re completely exhausted to rest; rest then is very inefficient. Schedule rest time into your calendar like meetings! The Pomodoro Technique 🍅 is a great example: work for 25 minutes, take a mandatory 5-minute break. Have a fixed lunch break every day, give yourself a full rest day every week, take half a day off every month. These rests aren’t about doing nothing, but doing things that recharge you: exercise, meditation, socializing, hobbies, just zoning out… They are just as important as “working hard on goal-related tasks”!
- Learn to Recover: Recovery here doesn’t just mean sleeping. It also includes physical recovery: stretching, soaking in a bath, healthy eating. Mental recovery: stepping away from information overload, connecting with nature, writing a gratitude journal. Emotional recovery: chatting with friends, doing something fun, allowing yourself to be vulnerable. See recovery activities as “精力 needed for better progress,” not “wasted time.”
So, how about it? Do these six bugs hit home instantly?! Don’t be afraid! The charm of the ‘One-Move Instant Solve’ method lies in this: when you truly understand where the problem is🔬, the corresponding solutions become incredibly clear and simple!
You’re not naturally prone to giving up; you’re just being tripped up by these invisible traps! Starting today, try applying these “instant solve patches”: Find that ‘all-in’ Why, slice your goal into sesame seeds, act immediately for 5 minutes without waiting for the feeling, appreciate the journey and every tiny step of progress, accept imperfection and quickly get back on track, find someone to join you or a confidant, AND most importantly, give your body and brain sufficient time to rest and recover!
Remember, the finish line is important, but what truly makes you grow and change are the small, yet solid steps you take along the way! 👣 You’re not lazy; you just need the right method!
Starting today, stop agonizing over “why do I always fail” and focus on “how to do the next step well”! Trust me, you can steadily walk towards your finish line! 💪✨
If you found this helpful, hit like 👍 and save🌟! Share this instant solve technique with your besties who are also struggling in the “giving up halfway loop”! Let’s say goodbye to unfinished lives, together!