Motivation.

There is no such thing as self-discipline. There is only motivation. The lucky people in the world are motivated externally, and the rest of us have to do it for ourselves. Most "successful" people delude themselves that their motivation comes from within. They're generally idiots.

When you suffer from depression motivation is impossible to come by. To me that is the defining aspect of the disease.

You have to find something that will wake you up and pull you out of bed. Go see the sun rise everyday or fold a thousand paper cranes this month. It doesn't matter what you're waking up to do. Pick something arbitrary and do it for two weeks. Waking up and acting tells your brain it's time to work and work makes you do something.

Debilitating lethargy can be a result of a broken loop that isn't triggering your brain's reward circuit for doing something. This is useless advice for someone who can't follow it, which is why I don't try to preach it.

Returning to the above, some people are trapped and feel like they can't get out. You've at least got a skill at mixing music. Wake up every single day with protools or fruity loops or whatever the kids are using and make a 5 minute track. It can suck. It should suck. It sounds dumb but having something to do when you wake up starts the reward circuits in your brain churning. Sometimes you have to train yourself to enjoy successes again.

Psychopaths get away with it because they don't perceive failure. People that suffer from depression don't perceive success. Your brain is a dummy that will do what you tell it with enough encouragement and you have to outsmart it and start feeling success again, even if it takes a few months of MGMT ripoffs or whatever.

Source http://bit.ly/1AjParE