Definitely agree! But you need to find it in yourself a driving reason to put in the hard work.
Tell a depressed, unmotivated person with no goals to just "work hard" and see how far that gets you. There needs to be some reason to do something rather than nothing.
I'm not a doctor, but I think part of the advice for certain types of depression e.g. people who have let their home get so untidy that they are overwhelmed at the thought of ever getting it tidy again, and very similar to advice for breaking writer's block, is just to make a start, and let the small amounts of progress form a reinforcement to continue.
This is true, but it's almost never structured as "just do the work". If anything, it's the opposite framing: do a little bit, just this one isolated task, and see the progress you make.
Pressfield's "do the work" annoys me, because it undervalues the importance of energy and a goal. It's a great approach to make reliable progress and fight distraction, but it's badly inadequate to the task of creating activity in the first place.
Hard work and habit are far more ephemeral than motivation is. Motivation is at the core of all and any activity and anyone saying they do not have any motivation and are just working hard are manipulating semantics. Motivation is absolutely paramount to take care of to do anything because if you don't have it your hard work will instantly evaporate.
It's a very fundamental condition. You can't do away with it. Being low on energy doesn't mean you're not motivated.
Hard work, habits, etc., are extremely relative things from what I've seen, and it's still not well understood what they mean and how they work.
Can we please stop worshiping someone's conviction from a book?
BJ Fogg [1] has done a ton of research on habit formation. I successfully used some of it to form simple habits like daily exercise, house chores, etc. Still, you need a reason to get going. I want to drop my body fat to 12%. Sounds stupid, but keeps me going...
I have read both books. Couldn't stop asking "Why is he waging this daily "war" with the imaginary evil, instead of spending his life on something more enjoyable?" This guy is either insane or has a pretty big hairy "why".
Tell a depressed, unmotivated person with no goals to just "work hard" and see how far that gets you. There needs to be some reason to do something rather than nothing.