Groundhog Day 3.0
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The battle for motivation
The daily groundhog day is starting to have an impact. It’s like a corrosive agent wearing down my willpower and this being the third lockdown in a year here in the UK, I didn’t have a great supply to begin with.
How do you convince yourself that you need to sit and work when your deadline is self-imposed, or worse still, when you only have a wisp of an idea dancing on the edge of your awareness?
The honest truth is some days you just don’t. So, write it off from the breakfast table as a mental health day, a weekend or an un-birthday, whatever works for you. Write it off and stop whipping yourself with your procrastination for the rest of the day.
For the rest of the week try making it into a game. All games have rewards and when waiting for the probable rejection slip doesn’t conjure up inspiration it’s time to get inventive.
I dangle the carrot of reward and I break down tasks into manageable pieces. For example, if I tick two things off my list I get to play my favourite brain training games for ten minutes. If I get though four before lunch, I get to escape into fiction for an hour.
Starting the day positively is a huge must, but when it’s as simple as making your bed before you leave the bedroom and getting dressed in the first hour of your day, we can all manage that.
I also seem to have developed a problem with comfort eating which feels so much better now that I’ve reframed it as reward eating.
A little throwback to the 90s music, some nonsensical chatter and gif sending to a group chat and I’m back at the desk and ready to try adulthood all over again. Maybe it’ll work for you too.
