I’m not an expert on any of this stuff.
The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem. Feel it out, find what shape the problem is.
If there was a single, perfect way to get motivated, everyone would just do that. Hell, they’d teach it in schools.
Finding motivation is difficult because it is messy and complicated and different for every person and situation.
If you get a cut, you put a bandage on it. If you are thirsty, you get some water. But if you are feeling bad and lamenting the inability to do work, you need to do work. This is a catch-22, and you’re not crazy for finding it difficult to take the first step.
You do have to, eventually, take the first step anyway.
When I accomplish things, I feel good. Therefore, instead of spending time beating myself up because I haven’t accomplished anything, I can spend the same time accomplishing a few things, safe in the knowledge that I will feel better about myself at the end of the day.
When I finish a project right before it’s due, I still feel stressed for some time after. When I finish a project days before it’s due, I feel better over the same duration of time. If the project takes longer than expected, there’s no need to rush.
I don’t always do this. I have submitted my fair share of projects at 11:59pm. But it is a motivator.
On any given day, you do what you can. We life live one day at a time. Nobody is perfectly consistent from day-to-day. As such, I don’t think it makes sense to use past performance as a hard metric, or to dwell on “breaking a daily streak” of activity.
I find it easy to get distracted by social media websites. These websites make money by showing you advertisements and collecting data about your behavior on- and off-site. They have a financial interest to keep you browsing as long as possible. Websites that aren’t like this are built in the shadows of sites that are. You don’t have to give that to them.
Those damn Reddit links will still be there two hours from now. All my social media feeds are completely chronological. I wasn’t going to read the entire Internet anyway. Why dwell on what I might miss?
Recognize when you’re genuinely keeping up with conversations and when you’re playing notification-dot whack-a-mole. Are you clicking just to see if there’s anything interesting going on?
You’re probably well aware of the sensation of 5 minutes slipping through your fingers. Are you aware of the sensation of doing work for 5 minutes? How many words you can write, problems you can solve? I’m always surprised by the answer. And I’m always surprised about how simple it was. Maybe another 5 minutes is called for.
Get a nice glass of water that you only fill when you want to work. Find a place to sit and only sit there when you want to work. Click your phone off and put it face-down in a spot that you only put it when you want to work. Use a nice pencil that you only use when you want to work. Log in to a user account that you only use when you want to work (and then don’t sign in to Discord from it.)
Find a timer that you only use when you want to work. Thoughtfully and intentionally set the timer and think about the action of putting it down.
There is a certain chunked-work technique named after a tomato-themed kitchen timer that happened to be available to the author. It advocates working in 25-minute chunks only because the author performed a short experiment and found 25 minutes was most acceptable to him, personally. You’re not him.
You’re only allowed to click these if you’re not procrastinating on something by reading shit online. Okay?
productivity-or-something
tag on Tanya Reilly’s blog.