Keeping yourself motivated has become an elusive task in recent times, given the kind of negativity we’re surrounded with. Staying motivated is one of the most important factors in aligning yourself & staying on track towards attaining your goals. Motivation and Productivity go hand-in-hand. Only when you’re motivated, you tend to achieve more in a lesser amount of time, thus, achieve your goals faster than many others. For some, people are the real motivation & so staying in groups acts as the biggest source of motivation. However, this can be counteractive when there is pessimism floating around and your group members are not able to maintain high motivation levels. So it is prudent to find your ways to keep yourself motivated to influence external factors rather than it influencing & controlling you. Read the below tips to keep you motivated at all times.

Set a goal & keep monitoring: Without goals, you are like a ship setting its sail with no destination. There would be no journey to define & tread along. However, setting an overarching goal can be equally overwhelming for you to achieve. Having a mere long-term goal is of little value, as maintaining it becomes a herculean task given there are no milestones defined to achieve & no proper metrics to gauge your progress towards it. Hence to make it work for you, always break down the long-term goals into intermediate ones like (Breaking yearly goals into monthly & then weekly goals). This helps you to stay on track by focusing on short or near-term goals & look to achieve them without being overwhelmed & gradually moving towards achieving that bigger goal.

Prioritize tasks: Once you have broken down your larger goals into smaller ones, you need to define the tasks that you need to do, to achieve them. After all, actions only can bring you results. Now this will create a tunnel vision for you to focus on only these tasks as planned & look to completing them within the defined timelines. At this point, your internal motivation would be to achieve that prioritized short-term goal without getting worried about the end goal. This will also help you to build a daily routine to ensure you don’t miss out on any task that you should be completing before your head hits the pillow at night. This brings your complete attention to today’s tasks without getting distracted by multiple other tasks. Intensity defeats extensity every time & so concentrating your forces on a few things would give you the desired results that in turn would motivate you to move forward daily.

Getting into the flow-state: All said and done, there would be times when you’d fall short of your daily targets due to the distractions around you. Missing your targets constantly might lead you to undermine yourself, which can make you feel demotivated. To avoid this trap, it is imperative to get yourself into a flow-state. The trick is that you’d never fall for any distraction if you are completely engrossed in an activity you are tasked with. Set larger dedicated time blocks to do a specific activity. High intensive tasks, which would suck most of your energy can be scheduled at the time when you’re at your peak. Other lesser intensive tasks like reading emails, attending calls can be scheduled to the times when you’re not at your best. Other tips like demarcating your workplaces based on the tasks you do and keeping your surroundings in a tidy & orderly manner can also help you from not getting swayed by any distraction. These help you hitting your targets quite often, motivating you to keep doing it daily.

Celebrating small wins: It’s not a bad idea to treat yourself in some way or the other on achieving a milestone. It is important to reward yourself in a small way like going out for dinner or having a pastry, the moment you achieve that milestone you had initially set for yourself. This works wonders in a psychological way. Neurologists say that a fulfilling & satisfying experience extracts dopamine in you, which would prompt you to do those tasks again to enjoy that rewarding experience. Creating that rewarding experience holds the neuron linkages tightly, triggering you to meet your targets only to enjoy those pleasurable moments again. Also, periodically reflecting on the milestones that you achieved during a certain period motivates you further to continue with your plan, thereby avoiding any digression from your goals.

Reading relevant content: People who achieved those highest levels of success in this world give a lot of importance to daily reading. Reading brings new ideas which shape up your perception about things & people around you. Reading relevant content opens up your mind for new things and may help you in determining a new & fresh approach to tackle tasks at hand. Reading daily has a positive impact on your entire thought process which can inspire you to work more productively. It gives you that break from your daily routine & enlightens you with fresh & unique thoughts to stay motivated throughout.

It is always advisable by success gurus to rely more on your intrinsic motivation than banking on the extrinsic factors. The external environment keeps changing & so it may not always augur well in your favor. You can only drive yourself to do something when you have a larger cause to work for & that generally comes from your own reasons or your own “Why”. It is something you’re deeply passionate about & hence you want to work and live for it. You need to have a laser focus on the tasks that come under your area of influence, leaving behind the factors that you don’t have control of. This guarantees you inching towards your goals and achieving your dreams. I would like to conclude by quoting one of the influential leaders.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.- Jim Ryun

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