How to get yourself motivated quickly and actually get things done
Motivation isn’t just necessary for the big things, like climbing mountains or swimming with sharks. It’s also critical for getting the small, but necessary, things out of the way so that mountain climbing can be more than a dream. In my experience a lack of action is often tied to a being overwhelmed with either the possibilities or the size of a task, and rarely due to a lack of desire. After all if you didn’t have any desire (at least for the result), would the task or project even be on your radar? Probably not.
Unexpected free time
Most of us have thought at some point, ‘if only I had two more hours, I’d…’ Have you ever had the gift of unexpected time, and then wasted it by wandering around wondering what to do first? For example, the power goes out at work and you’re sent home early, another parent unexpectedly offers to keep your kids for the afternoon, etc., how many projects or chores would be first on your list? The idea is so delicious to most of us that it’s like trying to pick only one kind of candy in a candy store. But before you know it, the free time has expired and you feel guilty for wasting the opportunity. To get past that inertia of too many choices, as fun as it can be:
- Give yourself five minutes to make a list of the most important things to get done
- Look over the list and see if you have everything you need for each one. Cross out the ones that don’t meet this criteria. For example, if the power goes out and you can’t work on the computer, ironing probably isn’t going to be feasible either, but writing a letter to your aunt probably is.
- Pick one of the remaining items on the list and just jump in and start. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get completely done or if you start thinking that something else should have had higher priority. This was unexpected free time, not a contest, so getting traction on anything is a bonus.
Overwhelmed by chores
Last winter I had a bad cold that kept me in bed for two solid weeks; when I emerged the house was a disaster. The dishes had piled up as had the laundry. Dust kitties had set up small cities, the weeds in the garden caught the scent of chaos and well, you get the idea. The choice of where to start when there is so much demanding your immediate attention can be equally paralyzing as sudden free time and enough to send anyone back to bed in the hopes that the problems will disappear on their own. It rarely works to take that approach, but neither does diving in and going full tilt until you fall back exhausted and defeated.
The best strategy is to divide whatever needs to be done into small chunks of either time or task. So, if there are a lot of dishes to do, wash one sink-full or one washer load and then move on to something else like putting in one hour of weeding. Be sure to put breaks into your routine and a few small rewards, like sitting down with a cup of tea. Eventually it will all get done and probably faster than you were thinking when staring at the enormity of it all.
A major change in habits
It sounds so simple when someone says they want to get in shape or get healthy or spend more time together as a family. Not necessarily easy to accomplish, but any of these things sound like the tasks are straightforward and all that’s lacking is motivation. However, all of these things, and several others, are multi-habit changes. Take getting healthy for example. That’s probably going to involve changing shopping habits, cooking habits, eating habits, exercising habits, time management habits, stress response habits, and on and on. No wonder people try to dive in and find themselves falling off the bandwagon. It’s just too much to tackle all at once without a team of professionals always at your side.
In these situations, you can get and keep your motivation by changing just one habit at a time. Start with the very next thing that will be coming up in your normal schedule like grocery shopping. Get your desired changes in place for a couple of weeks and then start working on cooking at home with calories and portion size in mind. Habits don’t change over night no matter how badly we want them to. Be proud of yourself for changing even one habit for the better. It takes time and consistent use of the new habit to well, make it a habit and not something you have to think about.
Particularly when it comes to weight loss, be careful of setting yourself pass/fail tests and rewards, like losing x amount of weight for a big event, if that kind of project doesn’t stay on track it’s likely to backfire.
The scary or distasteful tasks in big goals
No matter what the dream, there are probably some parts of accomplishing it that aren’t all that fun. It could be getting up too early to go running or my personal least favorite, cold calling for information. It doesn’t really matter what it is, what matters is if procrastination over the unpleasant or terrifying tasks is keeping you from moving forward.
If this is where you need motivation, the trick is to break the task down into the smallest possible actions and then tackle them one at a time. So if I need some information from someone that I’ve never met, finding the company website is one task, obtaining the phone number is the second, making an appointment with myself to make the call is the third. If it’s getting up early, then deciding on the time might be the first task (is it 4:30 am or 5:00?) Then setting the alarm but not making yourself get up and then getting up at that hour but not going outside to run. There may be days when you can two or three sub tasks done like getting up and going running but don’t pressure yourself if it takes a week – that’s almost certainly faster than you were getting there before!
Need even more tips? Here’s an entire blog on the subject of motivation.
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