But I’m le tired, or, How to stay motivated.

A good friend of mine asked me for a post on how to stay motivated, so here is my best attempt at it.

To be clear, this post is not about getting motivated. However, since you’ve already read this far, the fact is that you don’t have to get pumped about doing everything. You don’t need some wonderful reason to clean the kitchen, except the knowledge that it’s just something you should do. Some sort of inner motivation is often not essential to getting a one-off task or routine chore done. Continually trying to find this inner motivation can be a way of procrastinating, and its garbage. There’s a lot of wisdom in the phrase “just do it”.  As an aside, if your kitchen is dirty, go clean it now.

Staying motivated isn’t easy, even when you’re doing something you love. Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man himself, took 20 years to paint the Mona Lisa.

Staying motivated implies that you’ve already started your project. It means you’ve created a sketch, or written a few paragraphs, or started reading that book you’ve always wanted to read. Now comes the difficult part: your motivation has started to fade.

This could happen for any number of reasons. For me, it happens when I start making frequent mistakes or my improvement becomes less noticeable. A proper thing to do here is refresh your basic skills and persevere.  

“But I’ve tried that and it’s not working.” It happens. I would put aside whatever you’re working on and find a blank sheet of paper. I like paper because you can express your thoughts however you want. The first question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you want to quit. Now, I’m pretty big on not quitting and going down fighting, but if you are seriously not enjoying what you’re doing, and the internal and external rewards of doing it are not worth the effort, then give quitting some serious deliberation. If you decide to quit, I won’t hold it against you. Just make sure you do it for the right reasons.

If you decide to persevere, take your paper and write down what about the project drives you, what about it excites you. Generally, internal motivators work best, however if you really love money or fame, then begin with those. Again, whatever works best for you. Write down only the most meaningful internal and external motivators. Remember why you’re doing something.

As a current example, I started this blog because I won a contest and the company wanted to publicize my entry. Then I decided to write about fear, and the response was awesome (thanks guys!), so I decided to continue. My internal motivation is helping people be better, and my external motivation, if I’m being perfectly honest, is the feedback I get.

Now if you’re saying “Hey, Jeremy, that doesn’t instantly inspire me to write/paint/create something”, good, it wasn’t supposed to. It was meant to make the process enjoyable again. If you want to write/paint/create something, go and do it. Now. Stop reading and do it.

And if you’re just reading for interest, go enjoy a snack in your kitchen. Since you just cleaned it, you should be able to eat off the floors. However, unlike the cliché of “just do it”, I can’t vouch for the wisdom of this.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello. Also, if you understand the reference in my title, you’re wonderful.