“Not enough time in the day.”

Have you ever wanted to do or learn something but you just couldn’t find the time to do it? Then a lack of motivation may be to blame. But don’t worry here are a few tips that will help you increase motivation.

Building Success Spirals

Ever do good at something for a while, but then you fail once and can’t seem to do it again? Then you built a failing spiral. A success spiral is the opposite of that. With a success spiral, you want to start with very small easily attainable goals. Doing this will increase your confidence which will allow you to set harder goals. Building success spirals will be the number one thing that will improve your motivation.

Set a reminder on your phone for goals that require daily action. Then, track your success for each goal. Your goals also need a completion date, you can’t succeed at doing something forever. Eventually, priorities change, this is why I recommend setting goals with completion dates from 1 to 3 months away. when this date comes you can either stop doing the goal or if you like what it is doing for your life then you can renew it for another few months.

Be the boss of your life

Something that has been scientifically proven to increase motivation is feeling like you are in control of your life. Making your own choices will increase motivation, no matter how small the choice is. It can be changing a meeting time by one hour to better fit your needs.

This is something the Marines have begun to implement. By doing this the new recruits performed almost twice as well as the older one’s that didn’t receive this training.

Try to be conscious of when you aren’t in control of a situation and change something about it so you gain some control.

Precommitment

One way to make yourself more productive is to agree to do something in the near future instead of right now. Make sure you tell as many people about the date you are going to start your goal so you can’t turn back.

Beeminder

Precommitting is easy when there is a single moment of success or failure. But many goals require you to make steady progress every day.

This is where Beeminder comes in handy. Beeminder is a web service which lets you set process-based goals. Then it creates a graph of your goal for you with a line showing where you need to be in order to reach your goal. You enter what progress you have made towards your goal every day. If you fall below the line for more than a day you fail your goal. Beeminder is the tool that helped me increase motivation the most.

Many people use Beeminder to lose weight, to exercise, to drink less, and to get more stuff done. Once you set a goal on Beeminder you can change it however you like, But the changes only take effect a week later. This will keep you honest so you don’t cheat out on your goal.

Beeminder is free to use, but you can pledge money on a goal. If you pledge money to a goal and fail beeminder gets the money, if you succeed you keep it. If you would like to learn more about beeminder click here to visit their site.

Eliminating distractions

One tip that many people know that they should do but still don’t is turning off the internet. Things like emails, facebook and youtube are all very distracting while you are doing work. So the best way to avoid them is to simply turn off the wifi on your computer when you are doing tasks that don’t require it.

Input, not output

When setting goals you should try to make sure the goal is measurable. Something that worked very well for me is focusing on input-based goals (write for five minutes) rather than output-based goals (write one page). Output based goals are easier to fail. This is because you don’t realize you are falling behind schedule until it is too late and you run out of time. On the other hand, input based goals are easier to keep track of and stay on top of. With input goals you know exactly how much you are supposed to do each day.

With input goals you know exactly how much you are supposed to do each day. This way if you don’t do enough one day you will know that you aren’t on track to reach your goal and you need to make up for it another day.

S.M.A.R.T goals

When picking your goals it is a good idea to make sure they are smart goals. A smart goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. By doing this you will easily be able to see your progress on these goals.

Planning

One other useful tool that I use is google calendar. It is a free calendar app that is very useful for planning your week.

You should try to set aside an hour or so at the beginning of each week to plan out what things you need to do and also what things you would like to get done.

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Continue gaining motivation

Most of the information in this post came from a book I recently read called The Motivation Hacker . The book goes way further on this topic and has many more tips you should check out.



you can get your own copy by Clicking Here