How I Motivate Myself

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People ask me a lot about how I get to squeeze out so much from each single day and I'm constantly having something interesting to do. In short, how do I motivate myself to do so much?

First, I think part of it is genetic for me. We are workaholics in my family -- my dad, my mum and my siblings. I guess even if you had me locked up in an empty room I would still manage to get extremely busy.

The other part is the one I can explain and hope it be of benefit to someone.

I don't spread myself too thin. To help make what I am saying clear I'll give you a contrast. I know people who are active and leaders in different units/departments at church, then hold positions in their community/estate association, also active members of two or more social communities (Rotaract, this club, that club). Plus they have families too. I sometimes envy them because I consider them superhuman. The only issue is that we all have same 24 hours a day. And because I don't have any superhuman duty to do and I am hidden in my geeky corner pouring myself into the few things I have committed myself to, I get to crank out more creative work. That's how I can write daily. Develop myself to have the skills I need to kickstart my enterprise software business. Write and publish books. Learn new interesting things. Engage in IoT projects.

I am excellent at filtering out distractions. Sometimes, it amazes people how easily I switch off. You can be talking to me now and I am off, already in another realm in my mind. This happens a lot when I am having a mentally challenging project I am working on. Even in my sleep, I dream about it. Every idle moment I get, my mind drifts of itself into auto-mode to pick up from wherever I stopped with project. It makes me a terrible conservationist. Imagine talking to someone who's suddenly turned to a statue and not hearing all you are saying. But the advantage is that it keeps me engaged longer than most people in whatever task I have given myself. I am also able to work on it both in my conscious moments and sub-conscious moments, and get more/faster results than someone else who works on it in his conscious moments. Perhaps, the biggest advantage of this is that I don't experience the mental fatigue that comes from going back to a difficult task after some time off. Switching cost; the mental work of getting yourself back into the high performance mode to tackle the difficult work. Why? I am constantly in that high performance mode. I don't ever switch off from the task at hand. I can hibernate or sleep, but the moment I wake it's instant pick up from where I stopped.

I am terrible at giving up. Its both a good thing and a bad thing. People try to take advantage of it in me. Just hand the stuff over to Michael and you can go sleep/party. So I, in turn, avoid those people. But the good side is that it helps me see things/projects through. I am able to execute all my major ideas. And as they say -- success begets success. Little successes motivate you to more successes and form the foundation of bigger successes.

Finally, I don't complain or worry about what people think/say. Maybe, I am too egocentric or individualistic. But I it helps me avoid negative emotion and thoughts.

2 comments:

  1. I just have a problem with locating activities to immerse myself in. I'm willing to work, be proactive and get busy at stuffs, but first I have to find out what to get busy at, and that has been my problem for almost a year now.
    It's easy to say "Find out what your interest is and go in that direction". But none of my interests are engaging. I've been trying to self-learn some programming languages but when I quit halfway through when I think of where I would apply the knowledge. Its easy to say "find a project and just dwell in ït".
    I think maybe I have a problem but I can't label it.
    I just gave up and started searching to belong to an NGO. maybe they'll locate a project that I can help with. I'm still not successful with that and I've been searching.

    In essence, what I'm trying to say is, you really did not say the kind of projects that gets you motivated, what I was expecting when I set up to read the post. Because most people, like me, get motivated by productivity. So it becomes easy to get motivated when you can perceive viable results, no matter how longterm it may stretch. Like you said about blocking out distractions, it could come to a considerable handful of us if we can first find out what to put our interest in.
    I don't know if you understand where i'm driving at.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just have a problem with locating activities to immerse myself in. I'm willing to work, be proactive and get busy at stuffs, but first I have to find out what to get busy at, and that has been my problem for almost a year now.
    It's easy to say "Find out what your interest is and go in that direction". But none of my interests are engaging. I've been trying to self-learn some programming languages but when I quit halfway through when I think of where I would apply the knowledge. Its easy to say "find a project and just dwell in ït".
    I think maybe I have a problem but I can't label it.
    I just gave up and started searching to belong to an NGO. maybe they'll locate a project that I can help with. I'm still not successful with that and I've been searching.

    In essence, what I'm trying to say is, you really did not say the kind of projects that gets you motivated, what I was expecting when I set up to read the post. Because most people, like me, get motivated by productivity. So it becomes easy to get motivated when you can perceive viable results, no matter how longterm it may stretch. Like you said about blocking out distractions, it could come to a considerable handful of us if we can first find out what to put our interest in.
    I don't know if you understand where i'm driving at

    ReplyDelete

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