I came across two articles from LifeHack.org today full of tips I hope you’ll find to be useful.
In Thirteen Tricks to Motivate Yourself, Scott H Young says “overcoming the emotional hurdle to get stuff done when you’d rather sit on the couch isn’t always easy” and boy can I relate! But Scott goes on to offer a “library of motivational boosters to move us along.”
Here are my favorites:
- Habits. You can’t put everything on autopilot. But I’ve found putting a few core habits in place creates a structure for the day. Waking up at the same time, working at the same times and having a similar productive routine makes it easier to do the next day.
- Go for Five – Start working for five minutes. Often that little push will be enough to get you going.
- Get the Right Tools – Your environment can have a profound effect on your enthusiasm. Computers that are too slow, inefficient applications or a vehicle that breaks down constantly can kill your motivation. Building motivation is almost as important as avoiding the traps that can stop it.
Staying with the number theme, Tatsuya Nakagawa says “we often over-think and over-complicate the methods we use for achieving our goals. A great way to achieve our goals is to define a key number and use that as our motivator, measuring stick or target.”
Here are a few examples from her 10:
- Number 4: fitness – the number of exercise days per week.
- Number 6: television – the maximum number of viewing hours per week.
- Number 8: sleep – eight hours per night is best for most people.
4 work outs? No problem.
6 hours of TV? Let’s see, there’s me, my wife, our 16 year old son and 11 year old daughter. If we each get 6 hours, that means I can still watch 24 hours each week, correct?
8 hours of sleep? Yeah right…
