Wiktionary
vb. (context idiomatic English) To do something in a mechanical, unreflective manner, especially as a matter of routine and without commitment or enthusiasm; to perform a task perfunctorily.
WordNet
v. pretend to do something by acting as if one was really doing it; "She isn't really working--she's just going through the motions"
Usage examples of "go through the motions".
Herr Geidel had a few men who could go through the motions needed to charge and discharge a musket, but he wouldn’.
For his own part he could only go through the motions of eating--his stomach was quite closed--but as a grateful coolness began to come down from the shaded skylight, wafted by the unvarying south- east trade, the bottle went about more briskly.
And we will go through the motions of living as if we had never loved like that, either of us.
A little more time would be a reasonable enough amount for study, he judged, and then he would go through the motions of sighting.
They'll go through the motions of giving you shots and therapy, but you'll be rotting in the dark.
Just then the west wing was being done up and oh such quantities of other things, so she was put into Jack's room and there, poking and prying everywhere, she found a box of letters that silly goose Amanda Smith wrote him from Canada, telling him he had got her with child: and certainly she begged him to go through the motions, you know.
But you make us go through the motions, everybody gets pissed off, and it's a hot night, and it all adds up the same way anyway.