Motivate Myself

How do I motivate myself YES I am sure everyone has had their ‘slow’ and unproductive days. Those are the days when we are in an absolute shut down mode and we just can’t seem to get anything done. We get very easily distracted, and even though we know we had to complete some of the task laid out before us, and even if we had our to do list ready, we just could not get our engines to start revving up and get things done.
Occasionally, on these days we could force motivate myself into getting some of the stuff done, but it is a very hard and struggling battle against ourselves.

There could be many reasons why trying to motivate myself we are having a slow day. It could be because we are sick, or it could be because we are totally burnt out from overworking. Some might argue that the cause could be a lack of sleep, and sometimes we eat the wrong food that took away a lot of our energy. Whatever it is, you can be sure that we are totally out of focus, and we just can’t seem to concentrate at all.

Not everyone suffers from this kind of ‘slow’ motivate myself days because some people naturally have the drive to get everything done without fail each day. However, for those of us who have to suffer from these unproductive moods, I am sure if you could just use a trick or two from the methods that I share in this article you will find it easier to increase your productivity on a slow day and turn it into at the very least… a semi-productive day. The best part of it is that instead of wasting an entire day, you can actually still get some work done.

I am sure by now that you are curious on how to do this? Read on below as I share with you some of my personal methods on dealing with an unproductive day.

Do the easy things that do not require thinking.

When I am in a very ‘slow’ day I start to quickly plan out and reorganizing the task I have at hand. I will try to do that ‘easy’ work that requires less thinking and of course much less work. It is advisable to leave all the ‘hard’ and boring work to a day when you are more energetic and ready to handle that kind of tedious work.

On those slow days, we are constantly feeling discouraged, tired and unmotivated. Success gurus are always telling us to take a deep breath and think about our goals and why we need to achieve them to hopefully deal with this ‘slow’ mood. Unfortunately, this does not work every time for me and I am sure it might not work out for you all the time as well.

Therefore, I would try to do the easy work first and get them all done. I will also do ‘planning’ of the actual work that needs to be done the next day so that I know when I regain my energy I will know exactly what I need to do and jump right back on track.

Do research and take motivate myself notes

Instead of doing all the tedious work on a day when you absolutely hate your workload, you could actually do a more relaxed work such as doing research and taking notes on what ‘new’ contents that you wish to come up with next in your projects or blog posts. Doing research is pretty easy as most of the time you will be browsing around and looking for points you can use on your own business.
Doing this ensure that the time is not wasted browsing around on the wrong sites that get you distracted, and at least you will get some return just the same.

Give yourself a shorter working hour but try to concentrate in the short hour.

One thing I love to do on this kind of days to motivate myself is to tell myself that I can actually finish up earlier than usual. In other words, I give myself a shorter working hour on my business today, but the counterpart of this strategy is that for the short hours that I am supposed to work on is that I have to give it a 100% and get as much work done as I can.

This strategy seems to work a lot on me because I know I can get off work early as long as I get the important things done. And because of this, I always look forward to the ‘end’ of the slow day and concentrate harder for a shorter period of time. This works because on most of the ‘slower’ days you will constantly find yourself looking at the clock and dread at how much more time you will have to suffer before the day ends.

This strategy actually takes away all the dread and turns it into a motivator and thus getting the important stuff on your to-do list done at a much faster rate.

Reward or Punishment system.

This method is a spin-off from the tactic mentioned above where I will promise myself a reward if I can get the tasks at hand completed before the day ends. I usually use food to motivate myself, but you can choose any other motivator that you can think off.
Of course when you can reward yourself; you can also use a punishment on yourself to get yourself moving. Some people work better when they are pushed and thus the punishment method will work for them. For me, I prefer the reward system more.

Deal with the problem.

As I mentioned before, there could be many reason to why you are having an unproductive day. If you are feeling down for some reason, it is best for you to deal with the problem first before you can work. If you are emotionally down due to a break up or anything similar that impacts your emotions greatly, it is best for you to deal with the problem first and fast because this kind of problem can usually cost you many ‘slow’ days, and you would not want that because it will not be productive to your business.

At last, there are times when all things that you try are hopeless. The best strategy or move right then is just to do nothing and give yourself a rest. Just remember to tell yourself mentally that you deserve the rest, and you will go back to your full potential the very next day and keep your own promises.