Are you one of those who finds it hard to stay motivated to get your work done? Are you procrastinating a lot these due to present situations of COVID? Here are a few tips which I found helpful in my daily life which I thought of sharing with you friends. These are the techniques which worked for me and I’m not being a productivity guru (I don’t want ever to be one).

1. Motivation is a myth. You don’t need motivation to eat a pizza, but you need motivation to wake up early even though you know it’s good to do so. But when you think about that university project which is due in next 2 days you feel like you need some external force called ‘motivation’ to get started. But famous author ‘Jeff Haden’ says it’s not the motivation. Motivation is something creatable. When you start your work, you see some result, then improve it, that will keep on adding and will create enough energy to get going. This is motivation. Using this theory what I do is to allot 10 minutes time and start doing that work which I feel not doing because of lack of motivation. I know I am not a guru and I will make mistakes (sometimes 100% wrong) at that first try. But getting started puts me on to a condition to continue what I was doing, continuing to exploring it keeps me on to the work and help me to finish the work. Try the 10 minutes allocation method.
2. Make changes in your life habits so that your body have no other option but to start. Say if you want to get up early, which of-course is considered as one of the good habits which people including me finds difficult to do, can be easily done by just changing the position of your alarm/phone location where you keep it. I keep it on a table across the room so that I have no other option but to get up and walk till it to stop it. One added benefit by practicing it is that it also makes me not to use the phone while in the bed and waste time scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or tiktok. That was a simple tip by which I push myself to get started and pushing myself out of the slump of comfort.
3. Sliced Goals: Making a goal and understand where you want to see yourself in next 1 year or 2-year time and breaking down the big long-term goal to small, short term attainable goals. As Ali Abdaal (a famous youtuber) said in one of his videos, this can be seen in a different way. Ask yourself this question, ‘What is that thing for which you will regret in next 1 year time by not started working to attain it today”. It can be different for person to person. It may be to increase the financial discipline or learning how to play a piano or start going to gym or so on (For me it was to start this website). Once you have figured out what are your goals which you need to attain, break it in small, short term goals. It can be monthly or weekly or daily depending on person to person and what you need to attain. See the progress and always strive to improve the rate of growth. One important thing you should keep in mind before making short term goals is that it is to make the initial stages simpler so that you will start working toward to the main goal. Making a bigger step at the starting phase can make it so difficult to push yourself to start working towards the goal.
4. Quantifiable goals. There is this concept called 5 SMART criteria about goals which says all your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. For example, for me I strive to post at least two articles weekly. By making my goals SMART, I can now prioritise my task accordingly and stop doing not so worth things.
5. Self-reward for accomplishing self-deadlines– This is a technique I used when I was in university. I started a very bad habit of submitting my university assignments at the last day of submission. According to my university, Deakin University, we were penalised a negative mark of 5% each day after due date. We can submit until 5th day after the due date which would contribute a total of 25% negative marks. Also, I remember my professor’s words of wisdom, late submission would not only reduce your score due to the negative marking, but students tend to submit lesser quality assignment. So, I decided to use this self-rewarding technique to make me submit the assignments on time. You know what I submitted 3 days early than the due date and scored myself a new Logitech MX Master 3 mouse.
6. Enjoy the journey, don’t wait until you reach your goal. It was in 2011, I came across this quote. It means to enjoy the small steps of success towards your goal, rather than keeping the happiness or celebration aside until the end you attain your goal. Who knows when you reach your goal, it become so obvious for you and you didn’t get the happiness you were expecting to get? I think life as to be short and if I am not enjoying each day, I am wasting it.
7. Its ok to fail, many times. All of us have failed in life at one point or the other, me too. Examinations, interviews and even a simple driving test are a few among them. But I say myself, ‘I am not going to quit and I am one step closer to success’. Quotes like ‘if you are not failing you are not trying’, ‘failures are the stepping-stones to success’, ‘failures are good teacher’ are a few other quotes I’d like to mention.
   Every day is a new learning, all the bad things are temporary and never let your yesterday take up so much of your today. You are stronger and wiser than you think. Forget perfection, strive for progress. Happy days everyone. Cheers.