Five Ways to Motivate Yourself on a Lethargic Day

A cup of tea in hand and moving slowly thru the morning. The trend for blogging (this is not a trendy blog if you hadn't noticed) is to make every entry about a list. Well, just to aid in your productivity, here's my list of 5 things I like to do to make progress when I'm not being as productive as I like.

1) Luxuriate In It Think back upon the last few days, have they been productive ones? Brains work best in an environment of variety. Working consistently on the same thing in the same way is not conducive to either productivity nor happiness. If you've had a few good days, let yourself take it easy for a few hours, better yet, get away from your desk and take a walk or something that changes the view for a bit.

2) Dangle a Reward That's a reward, don't get carried away with the dangling. Set yourself a very short term goal, pick something achievable and provide yourself a reward for doing it. For example, need to write a document, and you just aren't getting started? Hold off on that next coffee and tell yourself you can have it once you've created the empty document, and the title page. Maybe crafted a very-rough-and-sure-to-be-reworked Table of Contents. Set a time for it, perhaps 20min, and be sure to both hold firm to that as well as go get the reward. You made progress, that's very uplifting to the spirit as well.

3) Make a List A big de-motivator is having several things on your plate that need to be done. Even though they might seem clear, often there is some underlying uncertainty about exactly what constitutes completion of those items, so make yourself a bulleted list and just list the things you need to do, but make the items concrete. Not "Work on analyzing the competition" but "Make a table Documenting 5 competitors and their comparative characteristics." Similarly don't list huge, long term projects, but major steps: so not "Design new Website" but instead "Sketch out 3 front page layout options for approval"

4) Relish Deadlines If you're like me, you find yourself more productive when a deadline is looming. So if your nearest deadline is weeks away, you might find yourself lethargic. Take a look at that upcoming deadline and think about some intermediate steps. Now here's the tricky part, most of us need some threat to make the deadline have the magical power. So jot down those intermediate steps and send them to someone who'd care, preferably a colleague on the same project or your supervisor. Promise to hit those intermediate steps - bingo, now your ass is on the line. You look like a twit if you don't pull it off, so work at getting there. You might just find you deliver them and meet your "real" deadline earlier than expected. Oops, raises anyone?

5) Get Feedback This is a sneaky way to trick your own brain into action. Find something you've done recently that others would know about, pick it up (if it's pick-up-able) or think of a summary statement for it in your mind then go to that person (or send an email) and ask for feedback on how you did, or even better, what could you have done to make it more successful. A co-worker is fine. Even better, pick a person you don't like. The result? You'll probably, not necessarily overtly, get defensive. That's very primal energy you're feeling, it's fight or flight. You've already ruled out flight, as you went to them without needing to. So now channel that feeling of defensive energy into your next todo list item!

There you go a five item list. Some you've heard before, but I think some will certainly be subversive new ideas for you. Now am I eligible for Twitter link-backs and angry dissenting comments?

Researchinator turns to item 2 for inspiration...