Why You Do Not Feel Like Starting That Task

What feels like a lack of motivation may be friction in the work itself. How to recognize what is getting in the way and decide what to do about it

Oct 28, 2026

In my work as a consultant, I have noticed that getting started with a new client assignment can be surprisingly difficult, even for an experienced consultant. The objectives may be reasonably clear, and the expected deliverables have usually been described in a request for proposal, our proposal, and finally the contract.

Everything seems to be in order. At least on paper.

Yet when I sit down to do the actual work, I sometimes find myself wondering where exactly I should begin.

For example, the assignment might involve assessing an organization’s current IT architecture and proposing improvements. I understand the objectives, have the necessary expertise, and have done similar work many times before. But there are still quite a few things to figure out. What information is available? Who should I talk to? How detailed should the analysis be? What should the deliverables actually contain?

And sometimes there is another problem: I simply do not feel particularly enthusiastic about getting started.

Not every assignment is equally exciting, of course. But it can be surprisingly difficult to figure out why a particular task feels unappealing. Is it too routine to be interesting? Too complicated to approach comfortably? Are other pressing tasks competing for attention? Is it simply a bad day? Or is there something about the task itself that makes getting started feel like more effort than it should?

This is hardly unique to consulting. Much of expert work involves assignments that are relatively clear in terms of their objectives but require considerable thinking before we can get down to the actual work. We are expected to figure out the details ourselves.

And this brings us to a familiar feeling: I know I should be doing this, but I just do not feel like it.

We tend to interpret this as a lack of motivation. But perhaps the problem sometimes lies in the task itself.

When You Just Do Not Feel Like It

Imagine a typical working day. You have an important task on your to-do list. You know it needs to be done, you have enough time available, and there is no particularly good reason to postpone it. Yet somehow, you cannot bring yourself to start.

You may open a document, read a few lines, perhaps make a small change, and then turn your attention to something else. You check your email, respond to a few messages, or pick up another task that suddenly seems more appealing.

You might even find yourself doing some rather unimportant administrative work. Or even something completely unrelated to work. At least then you are getting something done. But the original task remains largely untouched.

The obvious explanation is that you lack motivation. Perhaps the task is simply boring. Maybe you need more discipline, better concentration, or a stronger commitment to getting things done.

Sometimes this explains it. Everyone has tasks they would rather avoid, and nobody can be equally enthusiastic about everything. But there is something interesting about how selectively this feeling can appear.

You may have plenty of energy and enthusiasm for other work. You might even enjoy doing something very similar on another day. Yet this particular task feels unpleasant, difficult, or simply unappealing.

This suggests that motivation is only part of the picture. The way a task is defined and organized may also influence how willing we are to work on it.

What Makes a Task Difficult to Approach?

Expert work involves a considerable amount of thinking that happens before anything visible gets produced. We need to understand the problem, choose an approach, make decisions, gather information, and determine what a satisfactory result should look like.

Sometimes these things are straightforward. At other times, even a familiar assignment can require quite a lot of preparation before we can make meaningful progress.

I find it useful to think about this as friction: something about the task makes it unnecessarily difficult to get started or keep going.

There are several common sources of friction:

The task is too large. Writing a report, developing a strategy, or designing an IT solution may involve days, weeks or months of work. These are reasonable assignments, but they contain numerous smaller activities that have yet to be identified. When the task is simply “write the report,” figuring out where to begin becomes a separate challenge.
The task is unclear. You may understand the general objective but have only a vague idea of the expected result. What should be included? How much detail is appropriate? What would count as good enough? Such questions can make even a relatively simple task difficult to approach.
The task involves unresolved dependencies. Perhaps you need information from a colleague, a decision from your manager, or access to a particular application. Sometimes the dependency is less obvious: you need to make a design choice before you can proceed. Until the issue is resolved, progress remains difficult.
The task requires too many decisions. Even when the expected outcome is clear, you may have several possible ways to get there. Choosing between them takes effort, especially when you are uncertain about the consequences. You can easily spend a surprising amount of time considering different approaches without actually getting anything done.

These characteristics are somewhat different, but they can produce a similar feeling. The task seems difficult to approach, and the prospect of working on it becomes less appealing.

What makes the situation particularly confusing is that you may have all the necessary skills and genuinely consider the work interesting. The difficulty lies in turning the assignment into something you can actually do.

And when another task offers a clearer starting point and an immediate sense of progress, it is hardly surprising that you might prefer working on that instead.

Diagnose the Friction Before Fixing Your Motivation

When you repeatedly find yourself postponing a task, it may be worth spending a few minutes figuring out what exactly makes it unappealing.

Rather than immediately trying to improve your motivation, consider the following questions. They are not intended as another productivity framework that needs to be followed systematically. They are simply ways to identify what might be making a task unnecessarily difficult.

Often, recognizing the obstacle is enough to make the next step obvious.

1. Is the Expected Output Clear?

Try to describe the expected result in concrete terms. A report, a recommendation, a design, a decision, or perhaps a specific piece of analysis.

If you have trouble doing this, the problem may be a lack of clarity. Perhaps you need to discuss the expectations with someone or spend some time defining the output yourself.

2. Is the Task Small Enough?

Consider whether you can identify a useful piece of work that fits into a normal working session.

“Prepare a new IT strategy” is a rather ambitious task for the next hour. “Review the existing strategy and identify the main issues” is considerably easier to approach.

Breaking down the work can help, although there is little point in producing an elaborate task hierarchy for something relatively straightforward.

3. Is Something Blocking My Progress?

Identify any missing information, decisions, or other dependencies. Some may be resolved with a quick question. Others may require more substantial coordination.

If you cannot proceed with one part of the work, perhaps another part is already clear enough to start.

4. Can I Simply Start Somewhere?

Sometimes the main obstacle is simply getting started. You know what needs to be done, have the necessary information, and can identify a reasonable starting point.

In these situations, I often rely on an approach I have written about before: just start doing. Instead of spending more time planning, I pick a part of the task that seems reasonably clear and start producing something concrete. It might be a few paragraphs, a preliminary diagram, or a rough outline. I do not necessarily start from the beginning, either.

Once there is something to work with, it often becomes easier to figure out the rest. The initial reluctance may also disappear as the work starts progressing.

However, this approach has its limits. If the task is fundamentally unclear, important information is missing, or progress depends on an unresolved decision, simply starting may lead to wasted effort and unnecessary rework. In such cases, clarifying the task or resolving the dependency is a better first step.

When the Same Friction Keeps Coming Back

An occasional task that feels difficult to start is hardly unusual. But if the same problems keep appearing, it may be worth looking beyond individual tasks.

For example, if every new assignment begins with several days of figuring out what is actually expected, perhaps the problem lies in how the work is assigned. If progress regularly depends on decisions that nobody seems willing to make, there may be something wrong with responsibilities or decision-making. And if several equally urgent tasks compete for attention, the problem might be unrealistic priorities rather than a lack of motivation.

These are problems that are difficult to solve through personal productivity techniques alone. They may require a discussion with a manager, client, or colleagues about how work is planned and organized.

There is also another possibility worth considering. Sometimes a task feels unappealing because it has little apparent value, or because you have started questioning whether it needs to be done at all. In expert work, we are often expected to exercise judgment about what is worth doing, not just how to do it. Occasionally, questioning the assignment itself may be more useful than figuring out how to complete it efficiently.

Of course, sometimes the task is perfectly reasonable, and we simply need to get on with it. But if you repeatedly find yourself thinking “I really do not feel like doing this”, the feeling may be worth examining.

Perhaps the solution is to make the task easier to approach. Or perhaps something more fundamental about the work needs to change.

🎙️ A Short Conversation on Foresight, Decisions, and Change

I recently joined The Foresight-Driven Enterprise Conversations podcast for a 25-minute discussion on foresight, decision-making, organizational change, and how expert insight can actually influence what organizations do.

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