Whenever people tell me they can’t get started on a project because they’re waiting for motivation, I think of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot.  In this classic absurdist piece, two characters sit around anticipating the arrival of a guy named Godot.  They don’t really know what he looks like and aren’t sure they’d recognize him if he showed up. But they wait for him anyway. They bide their time by telling stories, singing songs, napping, snacking on a carrot, swapping hats, speculating about the merits of hanging themselves from a nearby tree, and wondering if a passerby who stops to chat with them is Godot himself.  Nothing happens.  The play closes as it begins, with the two men in exactly the same place, thinking Godot will perhaps be coming tomorrow.

Waiting for motivation is a lot like waiting for Godot.  We often wait and wait, yet motivation doesn’t come.  Or maybe it does, but we don’t recognize it even if it’s standing right in front of us.  We fill the hours with meaningless activities or ones meant to take our minds off the waiting—surfing the Internet, checking Facebook, texting friends, playing games online.  We grow bored.  Occasionally we despair.  And still we wait, not stopping to think that perhaps it’s the waiting, and not motivation’s failure to arrive, that’s holding us back.

So the next time you find yourself stuck, unable to go anywhere until the elusive motivation gets there, think about these lines from the play:

“Tomorrow, when I wake up . . . What shall I say of today?  That . . . I waited for Godot?”

Stop waiting.  Start moving.  And maybe you’ll run into motivation along the way.  And even if you don’t, at least you’ll be some place different from where you are now.