Why We Can’t Trust Motivation
“If it’s important to you, you will do it.”
Ever heard this? Ever heard this and felt irritated or even mildly angry? Not necessarily with the news bearer, maybe just angry with yourself.
As someone with strong procrastination tendencies, I certainly have had this reaction. I am really, really good at avoiding things that don’t have looming deadlines and imminent bad consequences. And the problem is that projects you choose to pursue don’t usually come with deadlines and don’t mean bad news if you postpone them.
Let me paint you a scenario:
I come across a personal project that’s important to me and that I’m really excited about, so I start work right away. It’s a project that makes me feel good as I’m working on it, I’m learning something new, keeps me off self-doubts, life’s good.
Unfortunately for me, this project would take weeks to finish, and my attention span isn’t always this long, sometimes something shinier comes my way, which I feel more motivated to pursue because—to make matters more difficult—I’m not just a procrastinator, I’m a Scanner too.
(If that term doesn’t mean anything to you, to put it very shortly: Scanners are people with strong tendencies to jump from interest to interest.)
So then Project #1 will be pushed back to make room for Project #2, probably also important and definitely more attractive at the moment for whatever reason.
Some time later, as I find myself between, say, Projects #4 and 5, I will think briefly of Project #1 and that statement will come to mind.
“If it’s important to you, you will do it.”
“Hm… guess it wasn’t that important to me.”
And that’s where I’m wrong!
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s look again at the description above. The project was a good fit for me, made me smile, I picked it because of its importance to me. Maybe Projects #2 to 5 are also important to me, maybe they are not; the problem is that I am not looking at importance anymore, I am now looking at my current level of motivation. And motivation is a really bad indicator for measuring importance. Because it is fleeting.
I am talking about your short-term motivation, the one that can vary from one day to another, even from one hour or minute to another. It’s dependent on your mood, the other tasks you’re surrounded with—it surely is a matter of relativity (you know, when you feel motivated to clean your fridge because otherwise you’d have to do your taxes).
I once read a lovely comparison of motivation being like a spoonful of sugar. And it sure is! It doesn’t make the medicine any more meaningful to you, it just makes it more easy to swallow. But you are aware that it’s important that you take that medicine, with or without sugar. Except the sugar is what we tend to focus on.
We need to remind ourselves of the importance of the projects we pick. We know that working out is good for our health and that we shouldn’t postpone that. But if I base my decision of whether or not I work out today on whether I feel like it or not … well, I do like my couch.
Motivation is the enemy.
So what can we do instead?
Here are five tips to try.
Keep a can’t-miss reminder around
You know that bikini photo from 15 years ago you put on the fridge? Or those running shoes waiting for you in the hallway? Or the empty canvas on the easel in the corner of the living room? Maybe that one’s just me.
I don’t know about you, but I get used to the empty canvas pretty quickly. If I were to put a price tag next to it, it could be mistaken for modern art. This simply isn’t enough to get me to do anything.
I say: Go big. If you’re going to do the reminder, make it so you can’t ignore it. Put the easel in the middle of the living room. Make that bikini photo into a poster. Put the running shoes right next to your bed and sleep in your workout clothes. This is just a crutch, you won’t have to do this forever; what we’re aiming for is this:
Turn project work into a habit
We only have so much willpower to use in one day. You can train and strengthen it, but this still wouldn’t be enough to make you achieve the big goals in life. It’s an awesome resource to start something new and to do or endure the unexpected, but luckily for the long term, we don’t have to rely on willpower to get stuff done. It’s much easier to tap into the power of habits.
But what if my projects never last months and months and I never get into making it into a habit? Don’t despair. If you can build the habit to work on something given a specific cue, I have found it won’t much matter what the thing is. The habit will be “being productive”.
Well, you should sort of know what you want to do that day because “surprising yourself” and “habit” don’t really go together, but if it’s, let’s say, something you do while sitting at your desk or something using your hands, it should work from the same cue.
So if you’re writing your novel for three weeks, then delve into drawing for the following two, and hop over to learning Mandarin after that, you should still be able to use the power of habits.
The bottom line: Once you built powerful habits, your current level of motivation won’t much affect your decision of whether or not to work. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Make your daily goals laughably easy
I know the procrastinators need a little extra incentive here. Keeping a reminder won’t be enough to make them do something that will hopefully turn into a habit at some point. I found what helps me is to make the hurdle to get started minuscule.
“Set realistic goals.”
You sure hear this a lot. And it makes a lot of sense. Don’t even try to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.2 seconds if you’re driving an ice-cream truck. Be realistic.
Here’s what happens with me every time I try to make working out into a habit:
I get inspired by some fitness influencer, who devotes an hour or two a day to working out, 6 days a week, because—let’s be real—it’s their business. Surely for me this isn’t exactly what I should be aiming for. I’d be burned out after, I don’t know, day 3 or so.
So okay, a more realistic goal would be to work out 3 times a week for half an hour, right? That’s not that hard, and I’ve sure made this work before. Until I get a cold. Or go out of town for a week. Or am busy with whatever else for a few days. It’s like my much too fragile exercise habit of several weeks gets broken into pieces, and I’m out of glue.
All of a sudden my head is filled with: “I can’t even make THAT happen. I’ll never get to five days a week and accomplish what I actually want to do, so why bother?”
Yes, yes, I set the realistic goal, but deep down wanted even more. Don’t judge.
Is there a way out?
For me, this has proven to work: make your initial goal really, really easy, but plan on doing it for months.
Work out for three minutes before going to sleep.
I did that, I kept a little calendar next to my bed where I counted the days I worked out. It was so easy I hardly noticed I’d been doing it for four or five months. All I noticed was that I had increased my workout time incrementally and that I wanted even more. By starting with three minutes a day, I didn’t just built a stronger back, but also confidence in myself.
… Could it be that I am capable of making exercise a habit? Whoa.
Start small, dream big. Write 10 minutes a day, learn five new words, listen to a 7-minute podcast, study one article, play a song on your guitar. Celebrate your accomplishments (very important step, don’t miss!). Repeat.
And don’t complain to me if you find yourself investing more and more time …
Remove sources of distraction and temptation
Here’s an easy one that you’ve heard a million times before: Remove distractions. We can’t shut out everything and everyone (“Oh, sweetie, mommy is working right now, can we deal with the head injury in two hours?”), but some things like putting your phone away or disconnecting from the internet (there are apps to help you do that) should be easily implemented and they go a long way. I know I pick up my phone more times than I want to admit. If I am serious about getting stuff done, my desk is void of anything unrelated to the task at hand.
Keep an idea journal
“That’s all really awesome advice, Steffi, but my problem isn’t sitting down to start work or letting social media steal my focus. I get distracted as I’m working because my brain has too many tabs open …”
I hear ya. It’s not just the outer world that’s distracting; a bright imagination and rich thoughts can make you go off on tangents while you’re working just as well.
Sometimes an idea haunts me for a while until I’m so convinced that this is MY thing that I am tempted to let everything else slide to be able to focus on it.
What I found helps me and what might help you too is to keep an idea book. Whenever you have an idea, from simple image to elaborate and detailed plan, write it down. Be as specific as you wish, take a minute, take two hours, let your thoughts dictate how much you put down.
This way you won’t forget your idea in case you want to pick it up later, which sometimes is enough for me to be able to refocus on the project I was working on.
Sometimes I find that simply THINKING about the idea was really all I needed to fulfil my craving for it. That’s nice because I’m already done with it—check!—but I have it in writing, so I may be able to use it in combination with something else at a later point in time.
Seriously, I love going through my idea book because there are tiny forgotten notes in there that will spark new ideas. You never know if a seemingly unimportant note will be the missing piece of a puzzle you’ll need to solve later. Jotting down ideas has helped my creative process immensely, and I highly recommend trying it. Personally, I keep a big beautiful book at home, and I have a tiny notepad in my purse to catch ideas on the go.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and surely, these tips can’t be useful for everyone, but maybe they sparked an idea in you. Just remind yourself once in a while to not rely on your daily level of motivation to get you to go after your dreams.
And now I’d love to know your tips to get yourself into gear! If you have anything to share, please consider leaving a comment for the rest of us.