Imagine you are sitting in front of your computer and getting ready to work, then procrastination sets in. You surf YouTube to check out funny videos and other interesting short clips, you visit Facebook and see what your friends are doing. An hour later, you realize you haven’t started your task.
Does this sound familiar? If this describes you, then you need to learn how to manage your motivation and channel your energy into the right place.
Instead of spending your energy and putting the effort into social media, you need to learn how to master your motivation and use it on where it matters — your work and goals.
We are often motivated through inspiration or desperation, which forms the twin forces of pain and pleasure.
Think about it, the reason you avoid working on your task is that you feel pain when you do the work. At the same time, you feel pleasurable watching Netflix and YouTube videos. You are avoiding pain and chasing pleasure.
Therefore, you must understand how to make good use of these 2 types of motivation. Rather than avoiding your work because it is difficult, you must reframe the meaning and look at it as a challenge for improvement.
Besides that, reframe procrastination as pain. You don’t want to be spending hours watching YouTube and wasting time on social media, think about the future you want to create instead. If you procrastinate, where will that bring you in the future?
This is how you can gain back your motivation and work hard. Below are 5 ways how you can do so…
1. Reframe the meaning of your work
Have you heard of the story of the 3 bricklayers? Here’s a short excerpt from HuffPost:
“A traveler came upon three men working. He asked the first man what he was doing and the man said he was laying bricks. He asked the second man the same question and he said he was putting up a wall. When he got to the third man and asked him what he was doing he said he was building a cathedral.”
So, how do you look at the work that you are procrastinating? If you are don’t associate and link an empowering meaning to your work, you will never find the motivation to work for the long-term.
Ever wonder why people give up or quit their projects and goal? It is because they don’t have a strong meaning behind why they do it in the first place.
When you associate an empowering meaning to your work, your work becomes meaningful. You will look forward to doing the work rather than feeling tired and get bored with it.
The reason how extraordinary people are able to wake up earlier, work harder, and stay later than most ordinary people is because they don’t look at work as work. They give their work a bigger meaning and they are inspired and motivated by what they do.
Reframe the meaning of your work. Find out why you want to work and let the meaning motivate you.
2. Decrease the resistance
Think about it for a moment, why do you lack motivation and choose to procrastinate in the first place? Well, I bet it is because you find the work you supposed to do boring or difficult. And that is why you need a lot of motivation and willpower to get it done.
What if you can turn that around and make the work becomes easy? What if you can decrease the resistance and make the task a piece of cake and you can complete it in no time?
Think about how much motivation you need to brush your teeth every morning. Think about how much willpower you need to eat breakfast each morning. None. Zero.
This is because you have made the task like brushing your teeth so easy to do that it has become your habit. Therefore, if you want to gain motivation to work hard, just make your task easy to perform.
For example, if you want to hit the gym at 5 PM, but when the time comes, you don’t feel motivated to exercise, what should you do? Just make the task easy to complete. Don’t think about exercising for an hour in the gym. Instead, commit to the minimum.
Rather than focusing on exercising in the gym, focus on changing to your sports attire. That’s a win. It may be a small win, but the momentum will build up. Once you get changed, next, focus on getting to your car. You break down your bigger goal into smaller and more actionable tasks where you can get done easily.
This way, you are decreasing the resistance of doing. Just like if you want to write a 1,000 words article but you don’t have the motivation, then just commit to the minimum.
Focus on writing the first 100 words. Yes, tell yourself that all you need to do is to write just 100 words. Or if 100 words are still too much for you, just commit to writing the first paragraph. That’s all you need to do.
When you commit to the minimum, you are making things easy to execute. And you don’t need that much willpower and motivation to do it.
3. Create a commitment device
According to a study conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews from Dominican University, she discovered that people who write down their goals and action commitments, and who share a progress report with a friend every week, tend to increase the chances of reaching their goals.
Hence, what you want to do then is to create a commitment device so that you will force yourself to do is with increased accountability. Just like sharing a progress report with a friend. When you know someone is watching your progress, you become more committed to getting the work done.
So, how can you do this? For instance, you can make a public commitment by telling your goals and what you are going to do with people who support you. When you do that, you are putting yourself on the line. You become committed because you don’t want to break your promises.
Besides that, another more effective method is to share a weekly progress report with someone who supports you. Imagine you want to build a blog and you commit to working on the blog for an hour every day. But you lack the motivation to stick to your plan.
What you can do then is to find an accountability partner and tell your partner that you are going to send a weekly progress report and tell him or her what you have done over the week. This way, you are holding yourself accountable because someone is monitoring your progress.
4. Alter your environment
Your environment impacts your energy level. Most people are not aware of this, but the truth is that our environment plays an important role in shaping our lives.
Can you read in a noisy wet market? If your office is noisy and, in a mess, can you focus on your work and perform at your best? You know the answer. This is how our environment can affect our mood and hence, our level of motivation.
Therefore, if you want to gain back your motivation, you need to alter your environment. Set up your environment so that you can win. You don’t want your environment and surrounding to become a roadblock that stops you. Instead, you want to turn your environment into supporting you so that you can win.
Whenever you don’t feel motivated, but you need to work, change your environment. Take your laptop and work at another table, like in the pantry or the lounge or a café. Changing your environment gives you almost instant motivation.
Every time I feel a lack of motivation or find myself hard to focus on my work, I will take my laptop and work at a café nearby. When the environment changes, so with your state.
5. Change your self-talk
One reason we lack the motivation to work on our task is due to our self-talk. When we need to do the work, we tell ourselves that the work is boring, mundane, tedious, and we’d rather spend time doing something more pleasurable like watching YouTube.
The way you talk to yourself will also influence your level of energy. I bet there are times when you feel totally motivated. And when you are in a high energy state, you speak to yourself in a motivational tone within your head and are ready to take on the task, even if the task is difficult. You tell yourself, “Bring it on!”
On the other hand, there are also times when you feel totally no motivation at all. All you want to do is to do nothing and just relax or waste time on Facebook. When you are at a low energy level, you tell yourself, “I’ll just check Facebook for 5 minutes.” And there goes an hour.
Thus, if you want to keep your motivation high, you need to learn to talk to yourself in an inspirational way. Your self-talk influences your mood and emotion.
For instance, use positive words and ask yourself empowering questions to boost your motivation.
· Instead of saying, “I need to do this,” say, “I choose to do this.”
· Rather than telling yourself, “I must finish this,” tell yourself, “When can I start?”
· Replace the words, “I must finish this project,” with, “What one small step can I take now?”
These are just some of the examples of how you can change your self-talk to motivate yourself.
Conclusion
If you want to gain back your motivation and push yourself to work hard, you need to learn how to master your state and alter your energy level. Use the 5 methods above and make your work, project, and goal pleasurable to pursue.
At the same time, make procrastination something painful so that you will never want to delay your task.
If you want to learn more about motivation and how to get motivated to achieve greater success in life, check out my blog at https://StunningMotivation.com
