What motivates you each day?
You've probably have heard this question before in an interview. You likely responded with something about how your friends and family inspire you to work hard, or you feel like you’re making a positive impact on the world through your work, or even that you simply work hard for monetary incentives. While there may be some truth to your answer, there are certain factors that trigger instant motivation, regardless of how tired, lazy or overwhelmed you may be that day. We will be focusing on 4 factors that cause you to be motivated, and how you can use these factors to stimulate self-motivation.
1. Social Pressure
We’ve all experienced social pressure to some degree, and whether we were aware of it or not, we’ve used it as a motivational tool either in a good way or a bad way. The most common example I can think of is being involved in a sports team. Especially if you’re new to the club or team, there’s a good chance you aren’t quite as experienced or skilled as the other team members. Hence, there is a high amount of pressure to work hard and be better or at least as good as the others. If you were training on your own there isn’t nearly as much social pressure to perform or improve, and therefore you are much less motivated. This also occurs if you're in military basic training and feel social pressure from your instructor and fellow trainees to work until exhaustion.
Simply put, you need to put yourself in a position to feel social pressure in order to increase your motivation. If you’re trying to motivate yourself to get good grades, join or start a study group. If you’re trying to improve your fitness, join or start a workout group. By being around others with similar goals as you, you will feel the excess motivation that will help you get to the next level.
2. Comfort
More specifically, discomfort, this factor refers to the level of comfort you are feeling at any given moment. If you are 100% uncomfortable in a certain situation, then chances are you’ll end up working much harder to escape it. The reason for this? You don’t feel threatened by anyone or anything if you’re 100% inside your comfort zone, and are 100% certain that nothing bad will happen if you don't act.. Any outside threats from any source will force you to act, usually quickly. This is human nature. To move from an area of discomfort to an area of comfort. For example, imagine you’re given an assignment that is to be completed by the end of next month. Chances are, you’re not too worried about it, and may or may not even work on it, depending on how you’re feeling that day. There’s no consequence of not finishing this assignment, but you might find some benefit of doing so, or maybe not.
On the flip side, lets say you’re given another assignment that needs to be completed ASAP, and in this case your manager is threatening to fire you if it’s not done exceptionally well. Now, you’ll probably freak out a bit, but you will likely spend the entire night perfecting this assignment. The reason for this, is because you are very uncomfortable, and feel threatened by an outside force, that force being your manager. You are also in desperate fear of losing your job, so any other distraction won’t stop you from focusing on that assignment and making it perfect. This is why you often see people who grow up in broken homes or with abusive parents/siblings end up becoming extremely successful. It’s because they were constantly uncomfortable with their life. Their natural tendency was to move into an area of comfort, that which could only be found by achieving success in the long-term. They couldn’t find comfort in going home at the end of a long day, they could only find comfort if they truly worked for it day after day.
Sure this is great info and all, but how can I use this to motivate myself?
What you need is the will power to force yourself into uncomfortable situations, and in turn, force yourself to work hard. If you want to get things done, force yourself to do your work in an uncomfortable location. You’ll get a lot more done sitting in a wooden chair than you will by lying in your bed. A great idea is to make sure that your designated “work space” isn’t a memory foam cushion that’ll encourage you to slack off, and make sure your workspace is used explicitly for work. Then your productivity will skyrocket! Remember, the amount of hours you work doesn't matter as much as what you put into those hours does!
3. Possibility
If something doesn’t seem possible, then you won’t work to achieve it. Why would you invest the time and effort if the chances of success were so little? You wouldn’t. We are naturally driven towards challenges that are difficult, but possible to achieve.
Talk to any little kid what they want to be when they grow up. Chances are they’ll say something like: Superhero, NFL player or something crazy. I remember on my career day in elementary school, there were at least 10 of us wearing a football uniform, wanting to be an NFL player when we were older. As these kids get older and start to realize the impossibility or unlikelihood of fulfilling their childhood dreams, their answers will change to something else, such as doctor, lawyer or engineer. After they become adults, even fewer people achieve these goals. The issue is that they probably could have achieved the goals they originally had, but they didn’t see their dreams possible, or else they set their standards too high.
Many of us have goals that may seem difficult or even impossible at times. To stay motivated, and make these aspirations feel more achievable, the best thing you can do is to set realistic goals with smaller sub-goals that can be achieved with near certainty. The natural tendency is to “shoot for the moon” with your goals, but this can actually have a negative effect, causing you to be doubtful if you fall short, even if you improved significantly from where you were to begin. So be sure to set your goals high, but also make them realistic.
4. Time
Even if you’re under social pressure, uncomfortable, and see your goal as possible, you will likely procrastinate and wait until the last minute if given a huge time frame. All of us who were in school can relate. If you were given two months to complete an assignment, 9 times out of 10 you didn’t even look at the instructions until 2 weeks before the due date.
The natural tendency is to focus on urgent tasks that need to be completed soon, rather than important ones that don’t have to be dealt with until later. This is described more in-depth in Steven Covey’s bestseller “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”, but your focus should be on the more important tasks, and to complete those before they become urgent (i.e. due the next morning).
In order to motivate yourself over a long span of time, you must incentivize yourself by creating mini due-dates for your long-term goals. If you’re goal is to graduate college in four years, reward yourself for completing each semester. If your goal is to lose 50 pounds, reward yourself after each 10 pounds. Make sure there are actual incentives such as a celebration or buying yourself something nice.
Do it Yourself
The above factors are just four of many more possible ways to trick yourself into being self-motivated. Utilizing these factors takes time to master, especially if you’re not used to motivating yourself. Self-motivation is a fantastic character trait, which can (and will) transfer into you becoming a leader in your field, whatever that may be. Remember, the best time to get started is now!
I want you to make a list of your biggest goals in the next year or so. Leave enough space between each, because for each goal, you're going to write down everything that inhibits your motivation to work towards that goal daily. To the side of each inhibiting factor, write down how you can use the four factors to motivate yourself daily. Now get started, and you'll notice how you, and you only, are in control of your work ethic.
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