Tips On How To Get Motivated

Getting and staying motivated is vital, whether you're striving to reach a business goal, starting a new venture, or managing the day-to-day operations of your business. Lack of motivation can chip away at your confidence, and hurt your potential for success. The more motivated you are, the easier it will be to tackle ambitious goals and reach higher levels of success in your business. Follow these tips to get motivated, climb out of the slump, and build the momentum you need to reach your target. 1. Entrench Yourself in a Goal While lack of motivation may not be related to a specific goal, having a goal can often help you get motivated. SMART goal setting is one way to outline your objectives, clarify the importance of the goal, and create an action plan for achieving it. If you are able to break down long-term goals into weekly or even daily action steps, the progress you make every day can help you build momentum and get motivated to keep the process moving. 2. Relive Past Successes Do you remember what it felt like to reach an accomplishment, hit a significant milestone or make an important decision? Spend some time thinking about the process you went through, the work you put in and the taste of victory. Reliving some of your best moments can get you over the hurdle and into action. 3. Find Inspiration in Someone Else There will always be others who have walked the path before you, faced challenges and emerged victorious. Spend time appreciating the drive and determination of others, and explore how they overcame the challenges they faced on their journeys. This can be motivating, while also giving you some creative ideas for getting through the challenges you're facing. 4. Try a New Approach Progress often generates routines; routines can bring boredom; and boredom can cause a loss of motivation. If your routines are causing you to lose your fire, it may be time to shake things up. Try altering the way you do things, when you do them, how you do them and even how you think about them. Start to question your standard processes, and introduce a new way of thinking to get past complacency and renew your motivation. 5. Find an Accountability Partner Having someone there to encourage you, support you and challenge you can be an effective way to get and stay motivated. When you make a commitment to someone else to do something, you're no longer struggling along on your own. You have someone else counting on you, and most of us feel increased motivation to act when there is a chance we will disappoint someone other than ourselves. 6. Psych Yourself Up Ultimately, although some of these methods rely on external sources, motivation comes from within. The best way to get motivated is by figuring out what psychs you up and gets you moving. You can try your favorite music, positive thinking, celebrating success, and creating a personal mantra. When you've found an activity that results in a boost in motivation, and makes you excited to take the next step, you have found your own motivational secret to get over the slump. Write Down Your Goals Frequently Writing down your goals may seem like a no-brainer, but doing it often is taking this to the next level. Take your biggest goal that you are working on right now and write it down in a journal or on a piece of paper and stick it somewhere you will see it all week. Doodle something with it or write down what it would mean to you to finish this goal. You may even want to include some type of picture with it. Do this every week. This helps keep the goal freshly cemented in your mind, and allows you to recommit to it every single week. Work On One Task Related to Your “Big Goal” Daily Even if you don’t get to all of your other work each day, if you’ve moved one step closer to your big goal, you’ve made progress. Doing something towards your goal every single day will help build momentum so that eventually it becomes not only an ingrained habit, but a force that can’t be slowed down. Think about the popular saying when it comes to this tip, “A year from now you’ll have wished you started today.” Baby steps are all it takes to get you going in the right direction. Bucket List of Tasks I’ve found that when I’m not motivated to do something, it’s usually because I don’t know where to start. To help overcome that, I keep a bucket list of tasks that will at least get me moving in some direction. It’s not a “to-do” list, but rather an “I’d like to get to” list. That means it’s not overwhelming me if I don’t do the things on it, but when I do manage to do something on the list, it gives me an extra motivational bump. For instance, I may add tasks like cleaning out my desk drawers or organizing files. Sometimes, just completing one tasks will help mentally prepare me for doing another. The 5 Minute Rule One of the quickest ways to get motivated is to just finish anything. Similar to the thinking behind the previous tip, this idea is to help jumpstart your productivity. My five-minute rule is to do anything that I can complete in five minutes or less. For instance, responding to email, scheduling social media posts, scheduling appointments, etc. The fact the I’ll have completed at least one task puts me in a completely different frame of mind from when I started. This is especially helpful on sluggish mornings. Work in Intervals A lot of people make the mistake of blocking out four to five hours to just work straight on a project. This can be a very self-defeating habit. Not only is difficult to face having to work for that long, studies have shown that once you hit 90 minute mark your focus starts to dwindle. That means, for optimal productivity, you need to be work in intervals. You may not even want to do a whole 90 minute stretch. If you’re feeling less than motivated to work, just do 20 minutes at a time to get you going. Work on a single task for 20 minutes, then go do something else for the next 20 minutes. Repeat. Use a timer to keep you focused during the 20 minutes you are working. Most times, you’ll notice that you don’t want to take that break when the timer goes off. If you do wind up pushing through and working longer, just make sure to force yourself to take a break at least every 90 minutes so you don’t burn yourself out.