Why Are You so Full of Motivation at Night, but Lose It in the Morning?

And how can we act on that?

I didn’t do much yesterday. But just before going to sleep, I decided not to repeat that mistake again. Come the morrow, I would be more productive than I had ever been! I would wake up early, eat a healthy breakfast, do sports, start studying a new language, finally start developing a personal website… Basically, I would cram 30 hours of work in a 24-hour day, but that would be a problem for future me! I even started watching Youtube videos on the relevant topics while in bed, so what could go wrong?

Well, on the next day, when my alarm went off, all of that motivation that came so naturally in the evening was nowhere to be found. Even leaving the comfort of my bed was a battle. How did that happen? I still knew that doing what I had envisioned the previous day would bring long-term value to my life and would largely outweigh the instant gratification I would get from procrastinating. But I did so nonetheless and, before I knew it, the sun had set, I had not done much, but I was ready to get motivated again!

And chances are that you have experienced the same. Although there is no universally accepted explanation as to why that phenomenon occurs (my guess is that different reasons apply to different people anyway), I have found two compelling…