From what I’ve gathered from BJ Fogg’s “Persuasive Technology” and Stephen Wendel’s “Designing for Behavior Change”, motivation may not play as large a role for changing behavior as you might think it does. While this may sound counter-intuitive, bear with me and take a look at this section in “Designing for Behavior Change”. You can paraphrase this for yourself to “what blocks me from taking an action”. What’s described is the CREATE funnel, an acronym for cue, reaction, evaluation, ability, timing, execute.

Simplified, this might mean for you to set up a reminder at an opportune time (e.g. at the usual time in the evening when you get home; or piggyback on existing behavior like when arriving at work) to do an activity you find worthwhile and which you are able to do easily(!). This should lead to you taking action more often, and which, in my interpretation, is why the micro self-care approach worked for the author.

I’m actually well under-way of building something during my thesis which respects this model. If you want to discuss this approach, or you’re interested in participating, I’d love to get PMs.