Tips for Self-Motivation
Michael Specht is my Productivity Buddy ™. If you don’t have a Productivity Buddy yet, I highly recommend it. It’s one of my better ideas.
Basically Michael and I have a regular 10am Monday morning telephone call where we make sure the other person has completed their GTD weekly review, then we talk over our productivity challenges, tips and tricks.
The topic of today’s call was around self-motivation. Each of us said we had a nice list of tasks to get through this week but the trick is actually DOING THEM and not letting other things get in the way. I’m always getting sucked into replying to email, handling tech support issues, responding to comments, accepting Skype calls, etc. All good stuff, fun stuff, all stuff which needs to happen to keep the business running, but all stuff which stops me from getting the “important not urgent” things on my list done.
So I’m wondering what tips and tricks you folks have for forcing yourself to get the hard, smelly jobs done. Do you have a particular carrot or stick approach? Do you reward yourself or deny yourself with something until the job is done? Got any good blogs or podcasts on the subject you recommend?
Technorati Tags:productivity, gtd
February 5th, 2007 at 11:09 am
add “learn to gybe” to Micheal’s to do list.
He’s horrible at them.
Tom
February 5th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Ooh I suck at self motivation. I’m so good a procrastinating that I can completely reorganize myself multiple times a week before realizing that I’m putting stuff off.
When I was studying for my last lot of exams I found that the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack worked really well. (http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025/)
Other than that just getting started always works for me. Once I get going I tend to continue working very hard its just getting started which is hard.
You could try turning off your computer. Or if you need your computer for the work in question then you could use the Kiwi Cloak (http://jeremyfreese.blogspot.com/2007/01/kiwi-cloak-quasi-coercive-anti-websurf.html)
which blocks particular sites for a set amount of time.
I believe there are also programs which allow you to block certain apps for a set amount of time too. The only one I know of is Temptation Blocker but their site doesn’t appear to be running atm.
The only other tip I can think of is just to promise yourself that you can check your email etc once you’ve done 10min of work. Usually once you get started your email doesn’t seem quite as important.
Now if only I could take my own advice…
February 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Thanks Tom, horrible, I can’t even begin one :-), actually book windsurfing lesson is close to the top but I keep procrastinating, too difficult. Need to look up RPS phone number, sort out date and time work, family, wind and someone to teach me all sync up, get fit, get over embarrassment of being so crap, then actually call to book lesson, assuming planets have lined up. See it is just too difficult.
Hey, Cam when did productivity buddy become trade marked?
Miriam, (10+2)*5 is great my biggest issue though is having nice little small tasks that I “know” will turn into great big ugly tasks once I spend sometime on them. Therefore easier to do nothing!!
February 5th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I just remembered a couple of recent posts on Steve Pavlina’s blog which might be relevent.
http://www.stevepavlina.com
other than that just the usual suspects as far as blogs go… lifehack.org, lifehacker.com, 43folders.com
February 15th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I’m a big fan of “quiet time”. No email, no phone, no IM, no Skype, etc. Nothing but work without interruption for one hour.
Do that once a day, and you can get out all those niggly things that you put off.
February 20th, 2007 at 2:06 am
self motivation is a good start. everybody needs motivation from others if not from self.