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4 keys to staying motivated [Ian's Messy Desk]

I had someone in my office a couple of weeks ago. As we talked about work, she told me she was having trouble getting motivated about work. When I pressed her for details, she wasn’t really able to nail things down. It was just some sort of “feeling” she had.

One of the tricky bits about motivation is understanding what it means. We have a sense that motivation is a positive process and that somehow it is connected to success. Beyond that, we don’t often have a clear definition with which to work.

To be able to motivate ourselves, we need to know what motivation is.

Motivation is about making a choice

How many times have you heard or said, I don’t feel motivated, believing motivation had something to do with the way someone felt. If I feel like running, I’m motivated to exercise. If I don’t feel like running, I’m not motivated. It doesn’t work that way. If it did, we would all be about level on the accomplishment scale because there are always things people don’t feel like doing.

Successful people make choices. Or more accurately, successful people realize that every action involves a choice; you chose to visit the gym or you choose to sit and watch television. If you want good results, you make good choices.

You stay motivated by deciding what choices you need to make to achieve the outcomes you expect.

Motivation is about action

You’ve made a choice, now what’s the next step? Exactly!

How are you going to get from where you are today to where you would like to be in 12 months time? Break that down to the “next action” (to use David Allen’s term) needed to move you a step closer to your end result. The expected result might require one step or 12 steps. You have to know what those steps are and take them.

We take actions to achieve results.

Motivation is about setting goals

What’s going on in your life today? The results you’re getting today are a consequence of the choices you made yesterday. If today’s results are what you want them to be, it’s because you made good choices yesterday.

What results do you want tomorrow or next week or next month or next year? If you want to make good choices and take the correct actions, you need to set goals to achieve; short and long term.

Clear goals drive you to do the things that need doing.

Motivation is not about feelings

Do you have children? Have you ever crawled out of a warm bed in the middle of the night to take care of a child? A good parent doesn’t stay in bed thinking, the kid can suffer, because I don’t feel like getting out of bed. Something more important than your comfort and feelings drive you to care for a child. That drive is motivation. Whether it’s 20 pounds you need to lose, a presentation that has to be made or a skill you need to learn, overcoming “I don’t feel like doing it” is being motivated.

You’ve probably figured out by now that there is not really 4 separate keys to staying motivated. The key to motivation is, making a choice to take action to achieve a goal whether you feel like it or not.

Once we understand what motivation is, we begin a journey to achievement.