For me what has worked best is setting a bare minimum that is super easy to hit. Creates opportunities for easy wins, which then often gives me just enough of that dopamine boost to do another little thing.

For instance, I try to work out 3 days a week. Some days even walking up my stairs takes almost all my willpower. So what I do is just tell myself, “it’s alright, to skip the full workout, just go over to your dumbell and do 1 single rep, that’s it.”

I almost always can at least do the absolute bare minimum, like lift the weight 1 time. Or pick up just one item of clothing off the floor, or put 1 dirty dish in the dishwasher.

Allowing myself to do just the absolute minimum without shaming myself really helped my mental health. I very often found that the task wasn’t as terrible as it seemed in my head, and the amount of energy I had was a little bit more than I thought I did.

The dopamine from actually being able to do a few things fed into itself and created those healthy brain paths and habits over time. I’m in a far better place mentally now, and my baseline has increases a lot.