10 Things to Increase Your Motivation

10 Motivation Boosters

Knowing how to improve your motivation is a great skill. Because without motivation, we’d all be destined to sit in front of the TV all day, binge watching Netflix, or playing mindless games on our cell phones.

Now, you might be thinking that you already waste your available time, far too often, but in this post, I’ll give you some tips to motivate you.

So below, I’ve made a list of 5 things that can drain your motivation, then 5 ways to increase you motivation and get you brimming with motivational energy :-).

Some ideas may work better than others for you, so try them all out and see which ones work best.

Tip 1: Stop Generalising

The past is not the future. One sure-fire way to kill any motivation you have, is to believe that because you failed before, you’re bound to fail again. Don’t define your life according to what went before. Learn from your previous mistakes (we all make them!), then put that improved knowledge into your new attempt. As I mentioned in the article ”Why it’s good to be a failure‘, the most successful people fail more than most, but they never stop trying.

Tip 2: Always Think Positively

Take the time to focus on the advantages of any given situation, rather than of all the disadvantages. It’s very easy to drop into a mindset of disappointment whenever something doesn’t go exactly to plan, but there’s always something good to take from it.

In future, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?”, or “What’s funny about this situation?”, or “What do I respect about this person who’s ‘wronged’ me?  Focus on the advantages instead of the disadvantages. 

Tip 3: Set Milestones

When you set yourself a goal, don’t forget to set milestones, or mini-goals along the way. Don’t let yourself have to wait a long time before having the celebration of success.

By having several smaller successes along the way, your mood generally, will improve and your motivation will soar. If for example your main goal is to double your income in three years, it seems so far off that it’s likely you’ll lose your motivation fairly quickly. So, set milestones for its eventual achievement.

Maybe set a goal like achieving 10 more sales per month, then 5 additional up-sells per month within six months, etc. you’ll remain motivated and be in a much better position to reach your goals.

Tip 4: Create a Pattern of Success to Boost Your Motivation.

Everyone has had times of success during their life, so revisit these times and remember how you felt at the time. Look back and collect as many of these experiences as possible, then keep them at the front of your mind to draw on when you need them most.

Tip 5: Learn How to Handle Outside Opposition.

There’ll always be opposition to your success. It’s human nature for us to believe that if our friend, or family member becomes successful, that they’ll begin to drift away from us, or the interests that we used to share will no longer be as important to them, etc. 

That opposition in almost every case, will be very subtle and completely unconscious to them, but believe me, it’ll happen. The best way to mitigate the opposition is to involve them in your success story.

Let them be a part of the process, so that they feel successful as well. Not only will you be helping them to boost their self-confidence, but you’ll also have an ally when things aren’t going so well. 

Tip 6: Use Carrots and Sticks.

Decide on a treat for yourself when you reach a specific target. Make sure that the target is specific and non-negotiable. You don’t want to leave yourself an easy exit where you still get the reward, even if you didn’t exactly complete the task properly. And, if the ‘carrot’ doesn’t work, you could always try the ‘stick’ method.

Join a community like ‘StickK‘. The site is the brain child of Dean Karlan, who was a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Yale University. The site allows you to set a ‘Commitment Contract’. You decide on a target, then stack some money up as a forfeit. If you complete your goal, you get your money back. If not, the money goes to a charity of your choice.

At least if you fail, you’ve still achieved something positive.

Tip 7: Try Pomodoro.

Sometimes, the thought of trying to do everything on your to-do list can be quite overwhelming, so you end up doing nothing. If that’s the case for you, why not try the Pomodoro Technique?

It works by breaking your day into small, manageable snippets of time (usually 25 minutes), followed by a 5 minute break. So, for 25 minutes you fully focus on your task, then you get 5 minutes to step away, re-group then focus for another 25 minutes. If you want to find out more about Pomodoro, there’s a good post over at LifeHack.org

Tip 8: Make Your ‘To-Do list’ Achievable.

Anyone who uses lists to prioritise their work knows that it can very easily expand out of all proportion. So, this tip is to keep your daily to-dos short and manageable.

Everyone’s view of how long a task should take is different, but for me, if I don’t think I can complete a task within one hour, it becomes a goal, not a task.

Goals can then be broken down into individual tasks, which I add to my list. Some goals don’t get completed in one day, but three component parts might. That’s three things ticked off my list, which let’s me celebrate three wins. Much better than feeling like a failure, because my original task was just too big to get finished.

If it’s just one task, but still too big to get done in an hour, use Pomodoro!

Tip 9: Set Constraints.

If you’re struggling with a project, set some constraints to give your mind a boost. It doesn’t matter what the constraint is; it can be completing it in 1000 words, or only using two colors, or completing the project within 48 hours, etc. 

By setting constraints, your mind has to work more creatively to find solutions. The mind likes to be creative and completing a creative task can be very satisfying.

Tip 10: Build Tiny Successes to Defeat Your Fear-of-Failure.

Like I said before with the to-do list. It’s better to be successful at small tasks than a failure at bigger ones. Break everything down into the smallest possible tasks.

A lack of motivation often comes from not entirely believing you can complete a project satisfactorily. If you can break that project down into 100 small tasks, you’ll give yourself loads of opportunities to grab success.

Success breeds more success, so the more small successes you can gain every day, the sooner you’ll build confidence in yourself and dismiss your fear of failing.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share? Or, do you have an opinion on these tips? Let me know in the comments 🙂