Hello Friends,
Often we attribute certain traits to character deficits. For instance, many of my clients think that there is something grievously wrong with them because they lose their motivation when working towards a goal or on a project, a few weeks after they’ve started. They often jump to the conclusion that their inconsistency reflects some deep flaw, not realising how universal this pattern is.
This is a challenge that is all too familiar in my own life. I’ve started many things and abandoned them just a few weeks in, or in many cases, only a few days after I began. I thought it was a character flaw and that I lacked discipline and willpower.
Over the last decade, I’ve spent time and energy figuring out how to sustain motivation and momentum on goals and projects that matter most to me.
Today we’ll explore the middle slump, what causes it, and how to work with the fragility of our motivation and consistency after the kick-off energy has burned out.
As the end of 2025 draws close and you look back on the year gone by, while also thinking about your goals, intentions and aspirations for 2026, I invite you to book your first coaching session with me.
It’s a space to reflect and close out the year, draw out the strategies that have worked, identify what you can repeat, and explore what new things you’d like to pursue going forward.
I coach clients on topics related to achieving goals, work-life balance and transitions, workplace conflicts, office politics, and career growth and more. I often work with professionals and individuals who want to navigate work and life through small, sustainable shifts.
If you’d like to explore working together, book your first coaching session at a 50% discount.
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Enjoy the read!
Siri🌱🌀
The Middle Slump Vs The Middle Way
In the 11-day silent meditation retreat, famously called Vipassana (although this refers to the main practice that’s taught in the retreat), practitioners meditate for 10-11 hours a day, maintain silence, abstain from stimulation and withdraw their senses.
When you attend the camp for the first time, the novelty of the experience, new practices and environment take you through the first three days. By the time boredom and frustration start to set in towards Day 3, the main practice is introduced on the fourth day.
S.N. Goenka, who set this format and established the retreat, warns that Day 6 (midpoint) is the most challenging point in the camp.
He says this is the day when people feel the most vulnerable and frustrated, and many want to give up. He reminds us repeatedly that this difficulty is to be expected.
I experienced this myself during both retreats I attended a few years ago. By the time Day 6 dawned, I was struggling a lot. My mind was all over the place and, both times, I was poised to quit the camp. The first time, I kept these thoughts to myself and heroically ploughed on, and the second time I went to the teacher and asked her to let me sign out of the camp.
The boredom, mental chaos, pain and resistance are normalised and acknowledged by Goenka and the assistant teachers.
They constantly reiterate that this is part of the process, that it happens to everyone, and that it is to be expected.
In my case, the teacher acknowledged my frustrations and that I was at the most challenging point of the retreat. She sent me back to practise with a few modifications that helped me work with the resistance, and I went on to successfully complete the retreat.
The ‘U-Curve’ of Motivation
Behavioural scientists Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis studied real-world behaviour datasets, and in their research we find an answer to the question, “Why do people lose motivation midway through goals, even when they start strong and the goal matters deeply to them?”
Across their multiple experiments, they observed a consistent pattern.
Start Strong → Motivation Fades → Then Rises Sharply Towards the End
The lowest motivation point was almost always the midpoint.
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It didn’t matter whether the midpoint fell on Day 2, Week 6, or Month 7. The motivation shape remained the same and formed the classic ‘U-Curve’.
At the midpoint, you become less enthusiastic because the novelty has faded, the finish line is too far (or non-existent) to be urgent, and progress is ambiguous and invisible.
Progress early in the game is exciting, progress close to the deadline is urgent, and in the middle there is nothing. There is no emotional ‘reward’, neither excitement nor panic to sharpen your focus, so momentum stalls or goes off the rails.
Your brain anchors meaning at the beginning and the end. This shows up as increased motivation and energy when you start something new, or increased focus when you are close to a deadline. But the middle does not get anchored as anything; it is invisible and non-existent.
All of this creates midpoint disengagement.
At this point, you give up on your goals, projects and aspirations, or you drastically change strategies because you think there is something wrong with your current approach and that this is why you are not seeing progress. (Does midlife crisis sound familiar?)
“People interpret midpoints as a signal that half the time has passed but less than half the work is done.” — Dai, Milkman & Riis
The middle slump is not personal; it is structural.
So how do you get past the midpoint without giving up?
It turns out that awareness and acknowledgement of the midpoint is the key to increasing motivation.
The researchers found that when people are made aware of the midpoint, or when it is clearly marked, motivation increases, not decreases.
When recognised, the midpoint becomes a psychological checkpoint, a time to reset, an opportunity to evaluate progress and a reminder to persist.
Midpoints can be navigated with intentional strategies like mid-goal reflection, progress markers, micro-deadlines, intentional novelty, solid routines and structural accountability with a coach.
Without midpoint interventions, most goals and projects are abandoned right here. They don’t get abandoned at the start or the end, but in the middle.
Here’s the takeaway for you.
Pick a goal that means a lot to you, but one you’ve given up on because you couldn’t see visible progress or sustain motivation.
- Mark the beginning and end point (establish duration, targets)
- Mark the midpoint
- Set up a midpoint intervention
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If you’d like me to coach you on this, book a coaching session and let’s get going.
Siri’s Pick
One hopes that with the advent of cool technology like ChatGPT (and its peers) saving us hours of thinking and automating mundane tasks, we would be able to save time at work and avoid burning the midnight oil.
Yet a lot of that saved time gets pumped into doomscrolling. Derek Thompson illustrates this vividly in his latest article on how social media is less about interaction and more a soapbox we are all glued to. Everything Is Television
See you next Sunday! Bye for now.
Siri 🌱🌀
