What to Do when your Motivation is Down

byDadaz123

2K followers

2 years ago

Motivation is what causes you to act whether to get off the bed to check the shrill noise in the sitting room or to click on the first page of the Online Entrepreneur Course, the flagship Wealthy Affiliate training program. Science defines this sluggishness as a state of inertia until a counter force of motivation knocks you out of the sluggishness. It is why a person does what he does. It is what propels human action.

Needless to say without motivation there will be little or no human action.

This is why our ‘ Why ‘ for coming to the Wealthy Affiliate portal needs to be strong. When every other thing fails to motivate us, it is our big Why that moves us to take action. If your ‘ Why ‘ for becoming an affiliate marketer is not big and hairy enough, this is the time to amplify it

Motivation has its highs and lows and as a result, we experience fluctuations in our level of motivation. Sometimes we are highly motivated and feel able to accomplish our goals and more, and at other times we feel lethargic and a little reluctant to work on our goals.

It is our responsibility to find out such times that we are amped and ready to take on the world so we can schedule our heavy tasks for such moments. It is equally important to note when our motivation is low so we can engage in light pursuits that do not put a high demand on our motivation to complete.

I know I am more motivated to get tasks accomplished in the mornings so I schedule my heavy lighting such as my writings for such periods of time; my wife, on the other hand, feels fired up to get things done at night while I am fast asleep. She is a health professional who works at night so she goes to bed late. By 6 am when I am awake and getting ready to start working on my To-do list, she is just getting in bed.

I seize the wee hours to get some stuff done because when I get back from my day job, I feel low in my motivation department and do not want to immerse myself in work that will make too much demand on my intellect.

What are the things you should typically do when you are feeling low on motivation?

• Trim the number of goals you are working on so you become laser-focused on things that really matter. Instead of aspiring to complete 3 or 4 tasks, you should concentrate on 1 or 2 tasks at most. I am aware we all want to get things done fast and so we overload our To-do lists.

• Take a large task and break it into small manageable steps and so set yourself up for victory in completing the steps one after the other. These small wins have a way of buoying up your confidence and energizing you to continue to the end.

• Conjure up in your mind’s eye similar tasks you have completed in the immediate past and the immense satisfaction you derived from doing so.

• Do you abandon tasks or leave them half-completed just because you have not mastered a particular skill set and so feel insecure in that area? Now is the time to go ahead to gain more skills in that area so you feel less insecure about them

• Establish a reward system to increase your motivation level. Allow yourself positive reinforcements after completing an assignment as a way of celebrating your win

At first, I was skeptical of the effectiveness of rewards in motivating myself to finish my tasks until one day when my kids bothered me with the request to take them to the movie house to watch Spider-Man 2 the following day. I read the review and felt excited to watch it. I finished both the research and the article post-haste. I doubt if I would have been able to finish the assignment without the prospect of the movie reward and spending quality time with my kids.

We are prone to thinking that we should wait until we finish a project before we reward ourselves. We should reward ourselves at the successful completion of each stage of the project. We do not need to wait until we have completed a project before we roll out the drums to celebrate.

There are certain days that you have tried everything in your toolbox to boost your motivation but have not succeeded. On such days, I would advise you to drop everything and go out for a long, brisk walk. Walking has been found to help restore one’s motivation. You will feel exhilarated and ready to go back to work.

However, it has been found that of all the things that can boost motivation in a typical workday, the single most effective one is that you are making progress in meaningful work.

Any wonder that successful entrepreneurs feel the most motivated.