Let’s face it. Most creative people and knowledge workers have to perform in their jobs and personal lives at a moment’s notice. With constant pressure coming at us to produce more, better, and faster, it can be a hard to get motivated through all of the work that we have to do on a daily basis.
SEE ALSO: How to Stay Motivated
If you find yourself “slipping through the cracks” and becoming unmotivated day-in and day-out, use mind hacks to get motivated.
Something that I have been playing with for a couple weeks now is having a “mini review” every morning, thanks to Peter Bregman and his 18 Minutes framework. Peter suggests before we do anything else in our day to take 5 minutes to decide how our day will be “highly successful”. This consists of me opening nothing else but my task management suite and looking over my available actions for the day and marking what I want to get done.
This small but important time slot in the beginning of the day can help me get motivated by giving me a purpose. Without a purpose for my day I will surely slip into an unmotivated state.
Another awesome way to get motivated is to make sure that you are giving yourself much needed breaks throughout the day. These don’t have to be the “normal” two, 15 minute breaks with a lunch hour in between. Oh, no. We are talking about small breaks through out the day that can last a few to five minutes.
The idea is that rather than forcing ourselves to work, that we stop every so often to give ourselves the permission to read our favorite blogs, update our twitter status, etc. so we can push our concentration back to our work. This idea of giving ourselves small breaks throughout the day allows us not to build resentments against our work, and can keep us motivated and focused for longer periods of time.
We talked about how you can insert a daily mini review into your life to find you motivation for the day, but what about motivation for your life? This is where David Allen’s altitudes come into play.
David Allen (you know, the GTD Guy?) talks about 6 Horizons of Focus. Basically, these are different levels that you can look at your life and they range from “pickup milk on the way home” to “be the father that you always wanted”. What you want to do is at least monthly (if not weekly) take a look at your higher Horizons of Focus. These would be your 30 to 50k feet Horizons. This is the range between where you are going for the next 12 to 18 months to the reason that you are on this planet.
It’s a good practice to sit down and get creative with these horizons as a way to get motivated to do your life’s work. The mini daily review is great for daily grind and trench work, but if you don’t step back and go to a higher level, you will spend your life living in the trenches where the chances of becoming unmotivated are much higher. Give your life meaning by looking at the big picture instead.
So, reviewing and breaking throughout your day are good ways to get motivated, but one of the best ways is to make sure that you are staying mindful. Being mindful is the key to doing the work that you are supposed to be doing.
Like I mentioned before, it can be really hard to “come out of the front-lines” or work. When you finally do you may look at what you are doing and think to yourself, “what’s the point of this?” Chances are if you are thinking that you aren’t being mindful of your work and life.
Becoming mindful not only helps you find the work that you should be doing but it helps you get motivated to do that work. Once you find the things in your life that need to stay and the things that you can let go of through mindfulness, having motivation will be the last thing you need to worry about. As your clarity of mind increases, your motivation for work will happen naturally.
I wish I could tell you the key to getting motivated is to quite whining, and just do your work. But, sometimes we have to use “tricks” to get motivated. Practice the above recommendations and you shouldn’t have too much trouble with staying motivated through your day and life.
(Photo credit: Motivation via Shutterstock)
CM Smith is a technologist, writer, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State. CM is also interested in personal productivity, creativity and how to use technology to get things done. Check out his writing at devburner.net or follow him on Twitter.
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