Hey,<\/p>\n
I’ve found the secret to motivation isn’t the clich\u00e9d
\n“follow your passion”, visualization or most of the other
\npopular accounts for staying motivated.<\/p>\n
Instead, I’ve found that motivation is mostly about one
\nthing: knowing how to quickly pick yourself back up.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
From this approach motivational slumps are inevitable, sure
\nthey’ll be less frequent if you love your work or you can
\neasily picture your goals.<\/p>\n
But just as you can’t stay alert forever without getting
\nsleep, it seems you can’t stay motivated forever without
\never getting into a slump.<\/p>\n
The best tactic to stay motivated, therefore, is knowing
\nhow to recharge your motivation, just like the key to
\nfeeling alert is to get enough sleep.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Recharging Your Motivational Batteries<\/p>\n
There are three steps I use to stay motivated that work
\npretty well. Each works well individually, but combining
\nall three together makes it a lot easier to get motivated
\nagain.<\/p>\n
1. Take ONE day off per week.<\/p>\n
When’s the last week you had one day with absolutely no
\nwork? I don’t mean just a weekend where you did a bit of
\nreading or spent a few hours on an assignment. But one full
\nday where you did absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n
If you’re like most people, it’s probably been a long time
\nsince you can remember that day. And, chances are you felt
\nguilty about taking it.<\/p>\n
In contrast–I believe taking one day off per week is
\nessential to staying motivated. Understanding that your
\nbody and mind operating in cycles, allows you to
\nstrategically rest one day to get more done the rest.<\/p>\n
“But I don’t have time to take one day off!”<\/p>\n
In the short term, I might believe you. If you have an exam
\nin a few days, taking one day off might be dangerous.<\/p>\n
But in the long-term, it’s completely untrue. Working every
\nday slowly kills your energy until you are accomplishing
\nless in the same amount of time.<\/p>\n
Chances are if you started regularly taking one day off
\nper week, you’d find your energies go up significantly
\nduring the week, allowing you to do more in six days than
\nyou could in seven.<\/p>\n
The best way to implement this tactic is to just pretend
\nthat the week has only six days. Do the same amount of work
\nyou would do per week, just squeeze it into six.<\/p>\n
In the beginning this might seem like a lot of pressure,
\nbut the added energy and motivation from one day off makes
\nit far more feasible.<\/p>\n
2. Refocus your TASKS onto your BIG PICTURE GOALS<\/p>\n
Another reason you might lose motivation is that you forget
\nhow what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis is connected
\nto the big picture goals you have for your life.<\/p>\n
If I’m working on a test for a class I hate, it’s easy to
\nlose motivation. It takes reminding to see how that class
\nfits into the credentials and skill set I want for my
\nfuture.<\/p>\n
Whenever you’re lacking motivation, I suggest giving
\nyourself thirty minutes to write about your goals. Go over
\nthe things you want to accomplish, see their impact on your
\nlife and reaffirm why you’re striving to achieve them.<\/p>\n
When I was starting my business I had a goal to earn
\n$20,000 per year. Thankfully I earn more than that now, but
\nat the time $20,000 represented freedom–not needing to
\nwork a second job to pay my bills.<\/p>\n
One thing that helped me was putting this goal on the
\ndesktop background of my computer. That way I was reminded
\nof it every time I turned on my computer.<\/p>\n
You might want to invest in similar reminders so that you
\ncan regain your motivation.<\/p>\n
Even the best reminders, however, will fade with time.
\nThat’s why scheduling thirty minutes every week or two to
\nseriously look at your goals and what you want can refocus
\nyour motivation.<\/p>\n
3. Build momentum with a TOP-HEAVY SCHEDULE.<\/p>\n
By now you’ve taken your day off, you’ve spent some time
\nrebuilding your motivation by connecting your current tasks
\nto your broader goals. There’s only one thing missing: you
\naren’t taking action yet.<\/p>\n
Half of motivation is momentum. If you can get yourself
\nmoving, the feeling will follow.<\/p>\n
The best way I know how to do that is to create what I call
\na top-heavy schedule. This is where you put more work early
\nin the schedule than later. That way you build up a lot of
\nenergy and overcome your slump.<\/p>\n
Making your weekly goals list top heavy would mean putting
\n60-70% of your week’s work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Making your daily goals top heavy would mean trying to
\nfinish 60-70% of your work by noon (or earlier, depending
\non when you wake up).<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Applying the 3-Step Solution to Regaining Motivation<\/p>\n
If I’m in a slump, here’s my 3-step process:<\/p>\n
1. Take a full day off.<\/p>\n
If either I haven’t been taking one day off per week
\nregularly, or I’ve been in a slump for more than one week,
\nI take a full day off.<\/p>\n
If the slump isn’t as severe or I’ve been working hard
\nearlier in the week, I may take a few hours off instead.<\/p>\n
2. Spend at least 30 minutes thinking about my goals.<\/p>\n
It helps if you write about them in a journal. The point is
\nto refocus you on what matters to you and why. If
\nmotivation is half momentum, the other half is your WHY.<\/p>\n
3. Set a top-heavy schedule for the next week and day.<\/p>\n
If you know that your next few days are intense, but the
\nlast few of the week will be much lighter, it’s easier to
\nget yourself into work mode mentally.<\/p>\n
Set a top-heavy schedule and start work first thing in the
\nnext morning. This will provide the momentum half to the
\nmotivation equation.<\/p>\n
Best of all, since you’ll be getting your work done earlier
\nin the week and day, it’s actually easier to stay rested on
\na top-heavy schedule than one which has work spread
\nthroughout the week.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, I’ve found the secret to motivation isn’t the clich\u00e9d “follow your passion”, visualization or most of the other popular accounts for staying motivated. Instead, I’ve found that motivation is mostly about one thing: knowing how to quickly pick yourself back up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/members\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}