How do I get things done after work?

You should do gym/workout before work if at all possible. Working out early in the day will set you up for the rest of the day. Low energy is caused by one of two things: physical exhaustion from over-exertion, or inertia from under-exertion.

Most days we wake up in a state of inertia, groggy, having to drag ourselves out of bed, not feeling quite so on top of things. The trick is to use THIS as our time to get our work out in. Grab a bite to eat, bring a post-workout snack with you, and head straight into the gym. Get up 2-3 hours early if you need to in order to make this work. What you'll find is that while you'll be a bit tired after your workout for say 30-40 minutes, by the time you're at work, you'll actually be higher energy than you were when you used to just go straight to work with no workout.

Now, work itself is draining, so once you get off work, you'll probably be low energy again - this time because of exhaustion not inertia - but you've already got your working out done in the morning, so it's not such a big issue. Now, if you have other things you wanted to get done too, rather than just gym - then your way to break the tiredness is simple: It's exhaustion, so rather than using physical activity to break out, you have to use physical rest to break out. When you get back from work head straight to bed. Set an alarm to wake you in say 45 minutes, and grab a quick nap. After you get up, grab a snack, go for a brisk walk down the street or do some light stretches/yoga to get you out of that initial "just woke up" inertia, and then get onto your plans.

It's a simple formula really:
- When in inertia (i.e. any time you feel tired that didn't involve you just spending the last 5-8+ hours working) then your solution is to work, to exercise, to move
- When in exhaustion (i.e. any time you feel tired ONLY after completing heavy activity) then your solution is to get some quick rest

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Also, a little off topic, but you mention lots of relapses, and looking at your signature it really does seem like a lot, so I want to make a quick suggestion. Have you ever been playing one of your favourite competitive video games, or playing an instrument, or using some other skill, and.. you just can't seem to get it right that night? You try and fail, get frustrated, and then fail even harder the next time.. and it just seems to continue worse and worse, with you getting nowhere?

Well, you might recall that, eventually you gave up, took a break.. and then when you returned to the game/instrument/thing later, you actually did good?

It's simple really. When you sit down to do something, whether it's a game, playing guitar, or perhaps reciting the lines you memorised for your play - you are fresh and clear-headed, and can usually do your best job the first time. If however, you mess up for whatever reason - suddenly, you're now feeling less sure of yourself, you're agitated, nervous, and the second attempt is less likely to succeed than the first was.. then the third is even less likely, and so on. It's all because you're remembering all those failures, and it's making you feel like you just can't succeed tonight. It's only once your brain can take a break and not have to look at all those prior failures, that you can regain your composure and do a good job.

So I suggest thinking about your PMO counters in the same way. If your brain can just see your current counter, with resets every couple of days for the last few months - what does that tell your brain? It says "Well, I always reset every 2 days - this time is going to be no different" and sets you up for a reset. I suggest making a fresh counter, and one that no longer tracks your resets. Keep it clean looking, and focus not on your past failures, but only on your current streak - otherwise the stress of past losses will only make you continue to lose over and over again. This is likely why you've been resetting so often. When we can see our own failures behind us, we lose confidence in ourselves and begin to fail much more often.

Just my 2 cents. I suggest trying a fresh counter without the reset marks on it, and seeing how much better you fare. You might be pleasantly surprised!

 

I too find myself in your situation, it's easy to be a couch potato. My biggest mistake is not going to the gym right after work, 5:00 PM and no later. If I start procrastinating it gets late, I don't go, and the downhill spiral starts. Nike summed it up pretty well with "Just Do It."
Also find some fun in life with other people. Stay off the computer and TV, there's not much there that's connected to "real life."
Look at this site and see if there are any activities that you may enjoy doing with other people http://www.meetup.com/
For me the key to a bigger life is meeting more people, not easy to do but if I don't try it's not going to happen.
Good luck.