Hi all,
“I’m going to try and stop starting all my posts with the word ‘sorry’, as that’s all I seem to do recently: sorry for this being so bad, sorry for this being late, sorry for not posting for three months, et cetera”. That’s how I started the last blog post that I posted here, and I’m determined not to break that promise just one post later, so I’m not going to apologise for another 2 months without posts. However, just know that that’s the only reason why I’m not saying the s word.
Today I want to talk a bit about different ways to motivate yourself into doing things, as motivation is something I’ve been struggling with recently. It’s currently school holidays (phew), however I’m not completely off the hook as I’m meant to be doing at least a little bit of work each day. This is what I’ve been struggling with, as I really don’t want to. So I’m hoping that talking about these different ways of motivating yourself might help me to motivate myself too. We’ll see.
1. Rewards
Who doesn’t like to get rewards for doing something they should be doing, eh? Whether it be food, or letting yourself watch an episode of your favourite TV programme, or buying something you’ve been wanting for a while, it’s always nice to get something in response to your hard work. So method number one is setting yourself goals, then rewarding yourself when you reach them. “If I read this chapter of the textbook, I can have a cookie” “If I finish making my notes on this, I can watch an episode of Sherlock” “If I complete my to-do list for this week, I can buy that pair of shoes I’ve been wanting for months” etc. Obviously, you have to be careful with this and not reward yourself too frivolously, otherwise you’ll spend more time watching TV than studying and end up broke. But if this is the kind of thing that drives you, maybe give it a go.
2. Punishments
So this is basically the opposite of the method above: instead of giving yourself good things for getting stuff done, you take away good things for not getting stuff done. “If I don’t finish cleaning my bedroom, I’m not allowed to watch any TV tonight” “If I don’t finish this past paper, then I can’t meet my friends tomorrow” Of course, there’s then the whole issue of having the self-motivation to hold yourself accountable and stick to your punishment (which personally I’m not very good at), but maybe for some people who have decent levels of will-power this is a more effective method.
3. Trackers
This is the type of motivation I use to implement new habits into my life, for example doing a Duolingo lesson each day or going to bed on time. Basically the motivation behind this is wanting to fill the tracker in and the end of each day so that there’s less gaps than there are days filled in.
There are different types of trackers like this. The first type is for just one habit, that you want to do every day of the year. I used to use this when I had music lessons and wanted to practice for at least 10 minutes daily. Put simply, it’s a calendar and you colour the box in if you’ve done the thing that day. If you fancy giving this a try, here’s a PDF calendar for 2019. I typed out all those numbers so you didn’t have to.
A second way of tracking habits like this is in a bullet journal. I’ve spoken about bullet journaling on here before so if you’re interested in reading about the system as a whole you can see this post, but I’ll just give you a quick summary of habit tracking in a bullet journal. It’s very similar to the method above, however it’s done on a monthly basis (as that’s generally how bullet journals are laid out) and can be used to track multiple habits at a time. For example, my current habits that I track include getting 9 hours of sleep, making my bed, doing my mouthwash, cleaning my retainer and getting to bed on time.
4. Telling other people
A fourth way to spur yourself into action is by telling other people your intentions, so that they hold you accountable for them. This is somewhat controlled by whether or not you care about what other people think, but if you do then this could be the method that works best for you. I use my parents to do this, because if I tell them I’ll do something then don’t do it then I feel like I’ve let them down, so this motivates me to get it done.
5. Start small
Often, a lack of motivation comes as a result of a daunting task. It’s fair enough, if you have a big thing you need to get done, to feel as though it’s impossible to get started. So, to build up momentum, start with something small and gradually build up the size of the tasks your completing. This helps you to increase enthusiasm and motivation as you get things done, which encourages you to get more stuff done, and so on. Have a big project to do? Why not start by clearing your work space, then make a plan, then work on one segment at a time. Have to organise your mess of a bedroom? Start by making your bed, the picking up dirty clothes, etc.
That’s all I have in terms of methods of motivating yourself, but I hope that one of these might have helped somewhat. Just before I end this post though, I found this post while writing this, and thought I’d share it here as it’s quite useful and also fairly extensive (and, let’s be honest, does a better job than me at covering this topic). Thanks for reading
~ April
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