[ericdykstra]

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.

[ZeroGravitas]

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.

[Bartweiss]

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.