Aug
27
Nickel and Dime Your Way to Motivated Bliss
Posted under Motivation
I get quite a few inquiries from readers who say they can’t stay motivated or focused. Some seem to imply that it’s impossible. Since they weren’t born motivated, they can’t ever become motivated.
Truth is, you can focus and motivate yourself.
Let’s put it into perspective for a second. If I offered you $1000 to focus on 1 page of a novel for 5 minutes, you could do it couldn’t you? Of course, you could. The same would be true of motivation. A reward of a gift card to your favorite store in exchange for 5 minutes of motivation - even on a task you’ve been putting off - would make the 5 minutes of motivation that much easier.
But what’s the good of only 5 minutes of motivation or focus anyway?
A nickel’s worth of motivation can go far if you are willing to apply compounding interest to the investment. Said another way, developing the habit of extreme focus and/or motivation for only 5 minute periods of time creates a baseline.
Once your baseline is set, you simply up it by another 5 minutes. Building the base is easy because (as we already established) you can always do something for only 5 minutes if you want to badly enough.
The point is to continue increasing your “base” time by 5 minute increments. Once you’re to 10, increase it to 15, then 20 and eventually you’ll be up to half an hour.
It may seem like it takes a long time to build up to the eventual focus/motivation goal, but it’s better to start somewhere than not start at all.
We can all start out with something small and repeat the success. Repeat it enough and mental evolution takes over and demands more.
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Comments
I used to have a problem of adding way to much onto my daily todo lists, which would cause me to feel overwhelmed - everyday I would add more than I completed! Add in the unscheduled phone calls & emails, and I was going crazy just trying to keep up. A few months ago I began using something similar to this, and it’s worked great!
First I need to have a tangible reward - something reasonably priced that I really want, generally in the $100 to $200 range. Then, at the beginning of each week, I list out my 25 most important things I want to accomplish. I might have 50 or more items, so I have to think about which are the most important (realizing that everything else is mostly clutter!) Then, at the end of the week, if I’ve crossed off all 25 items on my list, I give myself $20.
Over the course of a couple of months the little rewards add up, and it feels really good to buy a new ________ when I’ve “earned it.”
Nice idea, we are often encouraged to break down goals and work in small increments, but I’ve never thought of applying it to habits and building motivation.
SpiKe
Organize IT