Motivation.
I often struggle with getting the right motivation to do things. There are days when I know precisely what I need to get done, and why it is important, and yet I either don’t do it or I have to drag myself to actually get things done.
This is not because the work I am doing is boring, or because it is something that I don’t like doing, but because I believe that I suffer from what could be described as a chronic type of procrastination!
I always wonder what I could achieve if I really did work properly each and every day, instead of having to combat procrastination on an almost daily basis. Not all days are bad, of course. There are blocks of time, sometimes even several days in a row, where I effortlessly get into the flow and managed to achieve more in that time period than I otherwise would.
The gains to be had of working in a concentrated state are huge. I feel that my time when I am truly working and focussed are probably 8-10x more productive than the times when I am half decided whether I am actually going to get down and do what I know I need to do.
I am also often shocked about how little time things take to accomplish, once I actually sit down and do them. Most of the things on my todo list, especially the things that sit on my backlog for weeks or months, despite sometimes having some pretty tough consequences, take less than an hour, and sometimes even less than twenty minutes.
And yet, they stay on my backlog for lengthy periods of time.
I think part of the problem is that I am (mostly) my own boss, so this means that I do not have the level of accountability that I would have if I worked for someone else vs owning my own organization. If I don’t care enough for something to get done, why should anyone else care if I don’t do it?
I think I have improved over the years, at least with regard to my typical background level of procrastination. In high school, I rarely managed to complete any homework at all, to the disappointment of my teachers.
Nowadays, I sometimes manage to get some things done on time — which is a small but noticeable improvement!
The key question, of course, is how to find motivation and ensure that we can get things done when they are supposed to get done.
The key realization for me, which I occasionally remember, is that there is no other time but now. I cannot live my life tomorrow or yesterday, but I must live it today. So however I am living my life right now, that is how I am living my life! This may seem ridiculously obvious, but I tend to think that tomorrow will be a completely different me, someone who will be organized and get things done on time and be effective.
In reality, that person will only emerge today, not tomorrow.
