Last week, I wrote about how motivation very seldom comes from out of the blue. Once in a while, something flips inside your head and gives you that burst to work towards your goals, but I don’t think that happens instantly very often like that.
The key I talked about last week was: Motivation follows action.
You have to start moving in order to get that forward moving momentum.
You have to start.
Some people are very intrinsically motivated, and they have very little difficulty with this. But, I have found that there are a lot of people just like me, hiding in the shadows, who are sort of ashamed to admit that they have a hard time getting started with tasks, especially the really small stuff.
So here are a few ideas that I have actually used. Like I said in my last post, if you don’t have a problem with this sort of thing, you are gonna be facepalming the whole time, like, what in the world is your problem?
But, again, if you know, you know. So, here are some ideas:
Set a timer for 5 minutes, and just do the thing for that long. That’s all you have to do. Just 5 minutes.
If you need to clean your room, just set the timer for 5 minutes, and start moving. Just pick up the dirty dishes and the garbage, and when the 5 minutes is over, you can stop.
The thing is, you probably will keep going. But, if you don’t, that’s ok. Just do it again for 5 minutes later on or the next day. The idea here is to get started and to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING!
What we are doing here is working to activate that forward momentum by taking action, which will install the Motivation App we have lost in our app drawer, hiding underneath the Subway Surfer app.
We are also proving to ourselves that most of these jobs don’t take nearly as long as we think they will, which leads me to another hack that works for me:
Count in your head: literally count! Count how many seconds it takes to do those stupid little jobs you just cannot get yourself to do.
Maybe I am the only one, but I find the dumbest, littlest jobs to be the most daunting and psychologically painful as I put them off.
I already talked about that laundry pile that has been mocking me for days. (I think the 20 year warranty on the Automatic Laundry Folding Chair has expired. I can’t find my paperwork, though, because I can’t remember which color coded folder it was in -more on this in a few paragraphs.)
When I counted, it took a mere 15 SECONDS to make my bed!!! This task to which I say, “UGH” every time I try to get myself to do it actually is 15 seconds!
It takes less than 3 minutes to empty my dishwasher, and less than 10 minutes to fold my laundry! (I also have to count the seconds it takes to not put it on the bed or leave it in the basket, but to put it away.)
Less than 10 minutes of back-breaking, hard work 😉in exchange for a slow burn of frustration, dread, and paralysis.
Some jobs you are just gonna hate for the rest of your life. But they must be done, or you will be on the next episode of Hoarders after just a short while. So, just see what happens when you count in your head while you tackle them.
Counting not only shows your brain how short the task really is, but it also sort of “gamifies” it. You kind of start racing yourself to see how fast you can do it.
Here’s another one:
Something is better than nothing. Really. Trust me on this.
Do something, even poorly, even if you don’t do a good job of it yet.
Doing a cruddy job getting your space a little cleaner is better than planning a deep clean tomorrow, but then, in today’s reality, letting every single dish in your house pile up.
Doing only 10 squats every time your dog goes outside to potty is better than making a resolution to do a 2-hour strength training workout every single day, and then not doing anything at all.
With this hack, we are training our bodies and minds into a habit, and, because we have a small goal, we cannot give the excuse that we are too tired, don’t have time, or the day just got away from us.
If all I have to do is 10 squats, I can totally do that, right by my bedside, before I retire for the night after a super full day, unless I am in a hospital bed or something. I cannot say the day was too busy to exercise.
When you are trying to start a habit, the key is actually starting the habit itself, not so much about what you are actually doing.
You can worry about polishing, or adding more to it, later.
It obviously is not really going to advance me further by merely doing 10 squats forever. But that is what I am going to start with in order to get this habit going.
That polishing up the habit into a beautiful system will be your reward for your consistency that you can allow yourself AFTER it becomes a regular thing in your life.
The key here, when you are trying to build a habit, is to make it ridiculously possible to do, no matter what, even on your worst day (according to James Clear, the author of the book, Atomic Habits)
How about this one:
Begin before you think you are ready. You don’t have to research every single nuance of an idea before you actually do it.
Gather the minimum amount of information you need then, before you think you are ready, begin.
Don’t use the desire to figure out the perfect way to do something as an excuse not to start.
You know that’s what you’re doing. You don’t need to research “how to safely exercise with bare feet” (see last week’s post). You don’t need to watch 10 different strength training videos for a person in your exact demographic and place in life at this very exact minute.
You just need to move your body.
For perfectionists and deep researchers, this is going to be a huge challenge.
You want to do a major declutter of your whole house and then have all your stuff color coded, or put into those beautiful baskets that cost 25 dollars apiece. But you don’t have quite the right system figured out yet, so you cannot get yourself to just start even the smallest first steps.
This is paralyzing.
But actually performing the task will provide you with more useful information about tweaking and developing a system than any amount of abstract research ever could..
So, just get up and do one thing, and do it imperfectly, for 5 minutes. That’s all.
This is so sad, but it is absolutely true: I can’t tell you how many times I have stood at different angles in a room, analyzing my space, to think of the rock-solid arrangement of furniture or organization tools, that will become that work flow/organization system that will change my life forever.
I knew the solution was there: SOMEDAY I SHALL REACH ORGANIZATION NIRVANA (and the next day I would die).
My kids and hub are laughing out loud at this paragraph, because they know that look I used to get. They knew that something crazy was around the corner. Will she put the couch in the kitchen this time?
I scoured (still scour, if I’m being honest) the internet for ideas and think of wacky, out-of-the box solutions for organizing things and developing a bulletproof system. I devised charts and calendars, tweaking every last part of the document so it would work for how I think.
But, more times than not, all I actually needed was to take 15 minutes to throw the old papers and spent batteries away, take the ponytail holders back to the bathroom and the pair of socks (why is that here?) to the bedroom, and address the stuff in my “to do” pile, most of which were expired tasks, anyway.
This is all a bunch of silly, simple stuff that most of you have figured out already. I am aware of this.
Maybe it seems lame to talk about the small, simple stuff.
But, for some of us, this is really hard for some reason. I don’t know why, Sam. I don’t know why.
But these ideas actually work on the big stuff, too, like trying to get out of your rut and just doing the thing you have always wanted to do. I will elaborate on that concept in part 3 of this series next week.
But to sum up today’s idea, here is a testimonial from another person, who recently wrote to me in response to my first post on motivation:
Your latest post has a lot to do with what I’ve been trying to implement in my life for the past year-ish. It’s just a cute little song, but I’m often trying to think about that Patch song [a children’s song] where the chorus says, “Faithful in little things, ’cause little things make big things. Big things are done by doing little things every day. “
I noticed the power of being faithful in some small things when I started doing very light workouts last summer. I didn’t try to do big workouts, I just made a list of little “workout” things I had to do every day with no exceptions (except for if I was sick or something).
Even if I hadn’t done any of them all day, I could do them all at once in less than 15 minutes so I had no excuse to skip them. Then every day I gave myself a cute sticker when I finished, and that was the best part .
Once I got that down, it actually motivated me to make changes in my diet that were more sustainable, and actually really enjoyable, a lot of the time. Being consistent (not perfect at all) chipped away at extra weight, and it kind of felt like I cracked the code for weight loss. It wasn’t grit and self control.
It was small and consistent changes. If I had set myself up with a rigorous plan that I would have to follow or else I would fail, I would have quit really fast and not seen the value in small choices.
I’m just talking about all that because it taught me a really valuable lesson about life in general. I’ve always seen myself as an all or nothing person, and I think that belief about myself has held me back in a lot of ways.
So I’m trying to grow as a person with just continuing to apply that lesson to other areas of my life like cleaning the house and learning new skills/growing in skills I already have.
So, there you have it! A real life example from a real life person. Maybe you will believe me now.
So, now that I have been writing about this, I think it is time I did 10 dumbbell bicep curls for today. (But I’m not sure if I should store my dumbbells in the kitchen, where I could do them while I’m waiting for the coffee to grind, or in the living room, near the TV…Pinterest “exercise equipment storage ideas… Oh, look at that pretty filing cabinet makeover.. . Oh, my metal filing cabinet needs a makeover…”file cabinet diy makeover…” oh look at these baskets!)
Just pick up the dumbbells, you dumbbell!
