3 Simple Steps to Increase Motivation
We have all experienced a lack of motivation at some point in our lives. It is part of being human. Many people strive to achieve massive goals. Some of us even make to-do lists detailing every step of the way. However, when when it comes time to actually do the work, to take action, well that’s a whole different story.
Often times the work is not even that “hard”. I will often think to myself,
“I’m not digging ditches for ten hours… So what’s the problem?!” Why is it so difficult to find the energy to work on my computer for one hour!? The truly crazy thing is when I procrastinate, I often do something which requires MORE energy. I literally have found myself moving heavy boxes cleaning out the garage while procrastinating buying Christmas presents from Amazon online. So how do we increase our levels of motivation?
What exactly is motivation??
Let’s begin by defining what exactly we are talking about when we are talking about motivation. In simplistic terms, I’ll define motivation as the gap between wanting an outcome but not wanting to do the work. Motivation is that “thing” required to get from the goals in our heads to get what we “want”.
If I want to do something, why don’t I just do it?
It’s a simple question but one of the most difficult to answer. 99% of the time, we know “what” we need to do to obtain results in our lives. The question is more often “why” am I not doing the things?
There is a ton of research going into this question today and hopefully we fully understand the why behind this question but I’m focusing on actionable results on how to get action. The why is important to solving the mystery but here are the simple tools I’ve learned from a variety of people over ten years of testing what works for me. You’ll likely recognize these in some forms from other people.
My claim isn’t that I’ve come up with a unique system but rather, I’ve tested and modified dozens of systems I’ve read over the years. This is simply what I do and hopefully will work for you as well.
Step 1 – Resistance is futile!
Our brains require a massive amount of energy compared to the rest of our body. Before starting any task, our lizard brain says, “Are you sure you want to waste valuable energy on this?? We only have so much energy and you want to waste it. We may get hungry soon or run from a tiger!” Now obviously those days have long passed with drive-thru available 24 hours a day, but our brains haven’t learned to live in modern life.
By making the task appear ridiculously easy, there is almost no resistance. Taking from the ancient Chinese saying, a journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step. What this means to me is this, I have no desire to go on a 1,000 mile journey today. If I even think about the 1,000 miles, I will never start. However, I can take one step today. I wouldn’t even notice taking one step. Taking one step is so ridiculously easy, it will take no energy or time. My lizard brain says ok, no problem. We can do this and still out run a tiger if we need to.
“Make it ridiculously easy!”
Now taking this out of the vague riddle version of a proverb, let’s look at an example in real life. I enjoy listening to music while I work. Music is transformative for me. When I’m not feeling like working, the right song gets me going.
The problem is finding a good playlist is difficult because, well let’s face it, I’m really picky about my music. One song in a playlist which I don’t like will ruin my “flow”. So I prefer to have my own playlists of songs. I HATE creating playlists. I had this particular task on my to-do list for months, “create high energy playlist for working”.
Every time I looked at it, my immediate thought was the hours it was going to take to do searches, to find songs, compile them on a list, etc… In my mind, it was this massive task that was going to require a ton work. After months of pushing the task because it wasn’t really that important and seemed like this huge ordeal, I made one small change. I made it a recurring task every day and changed the title to, “Add one song to high energy playlist”.
Now that seemed easy! I can do that in less than a minute! Now this is a task my lizard brain can approve!
I literally laughed out loud at how easy it was after starting this approach. After a couple weeks, I had a new playlist with almost zero effort!
More steps to come… to be continued.