Motivation comes in waves.
One day you are in the zone, ready to take on the world and start
big projects, while the next day you are unable to get that spark back.
There’s a lot of information regarding how to motivate yourself
out there but most of them are not that effective.
Today, I will go over how to get yourself to do anything as effectively as possible
and we are starting right now.
If you just rely on motivation, you won’t go anywhere.
It comes and goes like waves in an ocean.
Some days you will work hard while you won’t get anything done in another.
If you want to do something big, you need consistency.
You have to constantly put in the work to get where
you want.
So if you can’t rely on pure motivation, what do you do?
Well, you have to create systems to keep yourself going even when you
are unmotivated.
You have to assume your future self will be unmotivated and lazy and
it’s up to you to create a system that will make
achieving your goals easy.
Here are the 4 steps to create a system that will help you do
anything.
1.
Plan for failure.
What stops you from committing to what you need to do?
You will usually have a bunch of excuses as to why
you can’t do it.
For example, if you wanted to eat healthier and start cooking your own
meals, you might come home one day and complain that it is too time consuming and
you would rather rest.
Another example would be if you wanted to start working out
in the morning and you wake up saying you are too tired.
Try to set things up so that your chances of failure are reduced to the
lowest they can get.
For the first example on eating healthier, you could get the person
you are living with to take out the food you want to cook from the fridge a few minutes
before you arrive home.
The food will be right there on the counter and you have no
choice but to cook it.
For the second example, you can put your workout gear and
shoes near your bed in the morning, so by the time you get up, they are right in front
of you and you might as well go by that point.
To figure out what to place there, you should make a list of what you need to accomplish
your goal.
You might come to realize that if you set the pieces up, you are more likely
to follow through.
2.
Put it on your calendar.
Imagine playing in a soccer game or more specifically 1v1 drills
against Messi.
You have the best shoes and gear in the world while he has slides and
some ripped shorts.
Who would win?
The point of this thought experiment is to show
you that the tools don’t matter as much as you think.
Productivity hacks and apps are cool and fun to play with but if your fundamentals
and execution are bad, they don’t help that much.
A simple calendar app is all you will need for this system to work.
You want to decide ahead of time when you are going
to do the thing you need to do and plan out when you are doing it next week.
Set a notification to alert you when you need to do
that thing on the calendar app and you are good to go.
Let’s do a quick example.
Say I want to workout in the morning at 8 am 3 times
a week.
I want to workout on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for an hour so I would
enter that in my calendar app.
Be sure to know when it will end so it's more clear for
you and it doesn’t look that daunting.
3.
Develop the focus you need.
At this point, you might be where you want to be like the
gym or at your desk but if you can’t focus then it is pointless.
For this, you will need to do some thought exercises.
What is the number 1 goal you want to achieve?
Put that goal anywhere useful.
Have it in your phone, have a post it note of it on your desk, or
get creative with it.
You want to see that goal whenever you are where you want to be
so that it can help you focus.
There are other ways to develop the focus you need such
as giving yourself a reward after you do what you need to do but I think the method of
having your goal in front of you is the most effective.
4.
Test and adjust.
How do you know if a system works?
You have to test it and make adjustments.
Most people tend to fall a bit short on the 1st and 3rd step.
For the 1st step, they might miss a few necessary pieces
and continue making excuses.
This isn’t a hard problem to fix as you can notice which
pieces are not in the right place and then place them where they need to be next time.
For the 3rd step, everyone has different ways to develop the focus they need so a lot
of testing is required to figure out what works.
You will need to try a lot of different things but don’t get discouraged.
Once you can get a system that works, you will be ready
to get things done.