“You Don’t Turn Your Back on Family…”
-Dom, Fast and the Furious
Inspiration and motivation may be some of the most difficult things to attain. Some claim they are as simple as finding a muse, others, claim to have them all the time. Am I one of those people? Absolutely not. Nothing feels worse than getting stuck at a roadblock, but there are ways around it. Here are a few things that I do to help me push through a lack of motivation.
The Build-Up
Sometimes, a task can seem insurmountable, which leads us to avoiding it and lacking any desire to complete it. When I am faced with a situation like this, I like to do small things in relation to it in order to build up to face it. As an example, let’s say you are writing a book. The task itself seems rather daunting to just sit there and begin writing, so how do we build up to it? Maybe we have someone ask us a question about the world? Then you think of a little bit of world lore and allow or imagination go wild. Then you absolutely have to start writing this down and outlining it. Suddenly, you find yourself writing and so begins the motivation, word by word, to tackle this suddenly not so daunting task. There are obviously other ways to go about it, but this is the general idea of how to build motivation!
Do Something Else
Now this may sound odd since we are looking for motivation to do that specific task but bear with me here. Let’s say that I have homework that I really do not feel like doing, but it obviously needs to be done. So, how do I push past the lack of desire? Well, I start by doing something simple, like cleaning for example. I could start with dusting, the wiping the counters down, and keep doing tasks to get into a satisfying, productive flow and then it’s just a matter of shifting what I am working on. This allows me to channel that flow, into something that needs to be done, my homework in this case, while also being productive in other realms of my life.
Reward Yourself
Lastly, you need to reward yourself for being productive. Think of it as almost training yourself. Got a paragraph done? Let’s have a snack. Finished a page? Take a 10 minute break. And so on and so forth. It is simple psychology, the concept of conditioning, that when you are rewarded for something, you have this innate desire to do it again. If you allow yourself to be rewarded along the way, it makes the process easier to get through and keeps that motivation to continue working.
A lack of motivation is, at least in my case, a major proponent of procrastination and stress as a result. Doing these things on a day to day basis has been helpful for me to continue, and I hope you find at least one of these techniques useful. At the end of the day, if you are your own muse/inspiration, you’ll be able to get anything done if you set your mind(s) to it.
