Becoming productive and developing motivation

Make it fun, do it just once, and smile. These are three key elements to increasing productivity and self-motivation.

Possibly the most important aspect to accomplishing the things you set out to do—and thus becoming productive—is your attitude and how you view your goals.

It is hard for me to have the motivation to do the nasty, boring, dreadful things, like cleaning out my closet or mowing the lawn. I would rather be doing other things—those just do not sound like any fun!

So to get those things done—to become productive and motivate yourself—you must make the activities fun and change your attitude theretowards.

For me, fun usually means a puzzle or a challenge. Mowing the lawn is actually enjoyable when i make it into a challenge: what is the shortest distance i can travel, and what is that path? To solve that i wrote a program that outputs a coordinate-based route. The next challenge is to memorize it, so i do not need the print out.

Challenges like this could be done real-time, as well: i am now very good at mowing my name into the lawn.

Sometimes before you can figure out how to make something fun, you must just do it—once. Doing it just once—a first time—also forces you to focus on what is now.

I recently realized that my diet has been quite poor after leaving university, and so i started to plan out how i would change it. I researched a lot about nutrition and started making a plan of what i would incorporate into my daily diet—so many vegetables, fruits, and so.

But that is where my fatal error occurred—one that i realized has constantly held me back in all of my endeavors for self improvement: losing focus on what is now, immediately in front of me.

Radically changing my diet in a matter of days is not a realistic goal—i realized that i would probably fail this. So i instead went to the kitchen with a new recipe i discovered in my research and cooked a meal. I also made it fun by learning a bit about the chemistry behind what i would be cooking.

There, now i have already begun to improve my diet. Instead of planning out a fantasy, dream diet, i did what i could in that very moment to improve it. Then i said to myself that i would do this once a day. Once i am consistently able to do this from day to day, i will increase the frequency.

I can continue to improve my diet forever, now. I can continue to set small, manageable—yet challenging—goals.

This is not to discourage planning, but instead to make the plans realistic. You must be careful, though, of not making the goals too easy, or not progressing. You know when something would be too easy for you. Remember, make it a puzzle or challenge—whatever motivates you to get it done.

So just try something once. See what you can do now. Last night i told myself i wanted to start flossing my teeth regularly again—so i went and flossed.

If you want to change something, try changing it now.

After i cooked that meal i smiled. I had accomplished something i set out to! It was a good feeling.

Congratulate yourself once you have made something fun, and done it just once. You did it! You are the only person who can make you happy, so just smile, knowing you are not on your way, you are there. You have just been productive. Keep it up.

What is one thing you would like to change? Maybe it is to take your dog for a walk more often. So get out the leash, see how many paces it is to the park and back, and smile.

Make it fun, do it just once, and smile.