Dealing with Motivation

Nov 10, 2006

Motivation is not a constant thing. I think this is a fairly obvious statement. Most of us spend an 8 hour work-day screwing around for 6 hours and then hopefully accomplishing something in the remaining two. If you get the point where you are super motivated and productive for the whole day you are probably:

  1. Your own boss and self-employed.
  2. Really loving your work.
  3. Quite possibly a super-human cyborg, because most normal humans get unmotivated.

I don’t think it’s possible to get to the point where you can spend more than 3-4 hours at a time being motivated and productive. At least not without abandoning your family, social life, and getting addicted to Mountain Dew (which I don’t recommend). What you can do is find healthy ways to deal with a lack of motivation and make the “I Suck” period much shorter.

When the motivation isn’t there

So you’ve got The Task. The Task is “teh suck”. First try to force yourself to work at it for more than five minutes. If you can’t do so then congratulations: you’re a normal unmotivated human being.

First get up and get away from the task. Really, I’m serious, leave it behind. Now figure out all the little menial things you need to do today like go to bank, shave, and try to rescue all the things the cat has managed to get stuck under the fridge.

Now start doing those things. They hopefully don’t require much mental strain and just need to be done. The goal is get rid of as many distractions out of the way as possible so you can return to The Task. Doing these little errands should also get you some momentum going by accomplishing things and being able to cross them off the check list in your head.

The goal is create a nice positive feedback loop of getting things done.

What ever you do, do not go watch tv / play video games / browse the internet. This will torpedo you and likely make the entire day a complete waste. I know this from plenty of direct experience. It seems like playing video games should relax you and get you back to The Task, but all it will do is strengthen your will to procrastinate.

And when it is

So your feeling motivated, you’ve gotten a bunch of little things done today and ready to take on The Task. First things first: turn off all the distractions. TV, radio, email, the RSS reader, cellphone, etc. Now you’re ready to get into the zone and get a week’s worth of work done in about 3 hours.

Don’t worry about taking breaks or making sure something important hasn’t landed in your email or voicemail. Just concentrate on the task at hand until it’s done or you get too tired to think clearly. Hopefully by the time this happens The Task will be finished and you’re free to go play outside for the rest of the day.