If you are functioning at a low energy in life, with bad habits and unhealthy activities, and you feel tired all the time even though you’ve had enough sleep, the first thing you need to do is not to overload yourself.

Overloading yourself can be cognitive, emotional, or physical.

Stop reading self-help books or getting into another productivity hack. Stop thinking about goals in terms of yearly or monthly plans.

What you need to do right now is to stabilize yourself, not to push harder because you are already worn down.

Stabilizing yourself is about regulation, friction, and trust.

  1. Regulation — start with a simple, consistent routine, like walking for 20 minutes every day at the same time. You want to build stability for your body.

  2. Friction — create a buffer before engaging in unhealthy habits. For example, when you feel the urge to look at adult content, instead of giving in immediately, pause for 10 minutes. Stand up and look at the sky. At this stage, the goal is not to quit entirely, but to break the automatic loop by introducing friction.

  3. Trust — at this stage, there’s a high chance you no longer trust yourself due to the thousands of broken promises you’ve made to yourself. You may not even have the motivation to strive in life. So you need to restore that trust. How? By doing one small activity that brings honor to yourself like reading a page of your religious text, cleaning part of your room, or helping your parents with something.

Do this until you establish stability. Aim small. One day at a time, or at most a week. Don’t create goals for the year or the month. Just do these things.

Then, you’ll know when it’s time to move on to the next stage.