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Ass-Kicking Email – How to Beat Laziness

Hey,

I’ve found the secret to motivation isn’t the clichéd
“follow your passion”, visualization or most of the other
popular accounts for staying motivated.

Instead, I’ve found that motivation is mostly about one
thing: knowing how to quickly pick yourself back up.

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From this approach motivational slumps are inevitable, sure
they’ll be less frequent if you love your work or you can
easily picture your goals.

But just as you can’t stay alert forever without getting
sleep, it seems you can’t stay motivated forever without
ever getting into a slump.

The best tactic to stay motivated, therefore, is knowing
how to recharge your motivation, just like the key to
feeling alert is to get enough sleep.

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Recharging Your Motivational Batteries

There are three steps I use to stay motivated that work
pretty well. Each works well individually, but combining
all three together makes it a lot easier to get motivated
again.

1. Take ONE day off per week.

When’s the last week you had one day with absolutely no
work? I don’t mean just a weekend where you did a bit of
reading or spent a few hours on an assignment. But one full
day where you did absolutely nothing.

If you’re like most people, it’s probably been a long time
since you can remember that day. And, chances are you felt
guilty about taking it.

In contrast–I believe taking one day off per week is
essential to staying motivated. Understanding that your
body and mind operating in cycles, allows you to
strategically rest one day to get more done the rest.

“But I don’t have time to take one day off!”

In the short term, I might believe you. If you have an exam
in a few days, taking one day off might be dangerous.

But in the long-term, it’s completely untrue. Working every
day slowly kills your energy until you are accomplishing
less in the same amount of time.

Chances are if you started regularly taking one day off
per week, you’d find your energies go up significantly
during the week, allowing you to do more in six days than
you could in seven.

The best way to implement this tactic is to just pretend
that the week has only six days. Do the same amount of work
you would do per week, just squeeze it into six.

In the beginning this might seem like a lot of pressure,
but the added energy and motivation from one day off makes
it far more feasible.

2. Refocus your TASKS onto your BIG PICTURE GOALS

Another reason you might lose motivation is that you forget
how what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis is connected
to the big picture goals you have for your life.

If I’m working on a test for a class I hate, it’s easy to
lose motivation. It takes reminding to see how that class
fits into the credentials and skill set I want for my
future.

Whenever you’re lacking motivation, I suggest giving
yourself thirty minutes to write about your goals. Go over
the things you want to accomplish, see their impact on your
life and reaffirm why you’re striving to achieve them.

When I was starting my business I had a goal to earn
$20,000 per year. Thankfully I earn more than that now, but
at the time $20,000 represented freedom–not needing to
work a second job to pay my bills.

One thing that helped me was putting this goal on the
desktop background of my computer. That way I was reminded
of it every time I turned on my computer.

You might want to invest in similar reminders so that you
can regain your motivation.

Even the best reminders, however, will fade with time.
That’s why scheduling thirty minutes every week or two to
seriously look at your goals and what you want can refocus
your motivation.

3. Build momentum with a TOP-HEAVY SCHEDULE.

By now you’ve taken your day off, you’ve spent some time
rebuilding your motivation by connecting your current tasks
to your broader goals. There’s only one thing missing: you
aren’t taking action yet.

Half of motivation is momentum. If you can get yourself
moving, the feeling will follow.

The best way I know how to do that is to create what I call
a top-heavy schedule. This is where you put more work early
in the schedule than later. That way you build up a lot of
energy and overcome your slump.

Making your weekly goals list top heavy would mean putting
60-70% of your week’s work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Making your daily goals top heavy would mean trying to
finish 60-70% of your work by noon (or earlier, depending
on when you wake up).

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Applying the 3-Step Solution to Regaining Motivation

If I’m in a slump, here’s my 3-step process:

1. Take a full day off.

If either I haven’t been taking one day off per week
regularly, or I’ve been in a slump for more than one week,
I take a full day off.

If the slump isn’t as severe or I’ve been working hard
earlier in the week, I may take a few hours off instead.

2. Spend at least 30 minutes thinking about my goals.

It helps if you write about them in a journal. The point is
to refocus you on what matters to you and why. If
motivation is half momentum, the other half is your WHY.

3. Set a top-heavy schedule for the next week and day.

If you know that your next few days are intense, but the
last few of the week will be much lighter, it’s easier to
get yourself into work mode mentally.

Set a top-heavy schedule and start work first thing in the
next morning. This will provide the momentum half to the
motivation equation.

Best of all, since you’ll be getting your work done earlier
in the week and day, it’s actually easier to stay rested on
a top-heavy schedule than one which has work spread
throughout the week.

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