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In this lesson, I talk about what motivates you to get off your butt and stop procrastinating. Including what worked for me today.
External motivations work well:
- Find an accountability team or partner
- Get a challenge going
- Have rewards or awards
- Create fun embarrassing consequences
In the video, I give some examples of each of these. These are great to get you moving, and I’ve found them all to be very useful.
Internal Motivation
But the most important motivator is your internal reason for trying to overcome procrastination. Why do you want to find focus? What is driving you?
Take a few minutes to assess what deeper reasons are motivating you:
- Financial reasons
- Love for your family, wanting to make life better for them
- Love for your customers, team, clients, other people in the world
- Love for yourself — wanting to stop struggling so much, wanting to make your life better, wanting to be healthier
There might be other reasons you can think of as well.
Once you’ve thought of your motivation — and it can be different from task to task — remind yourself:
- Put a note somewhere you’ll see it
- Put up a poster somewhere visible
- Send a reminder to yourself every day
- Put a picture of your spouse or kids on your desktop or phone lock screen
As you start to go to distractions, try to catch yourself, and remind yourself of your deeper Why. Try to remind yourself as you start working on a task as well.
The more you can remember this deeper motivation, the better you’ll do at sticking to this Unprocrastination challenge.
Exercise
Discuss your deeper why, and how you’ve been doing with this challenge so far, in Slack.