Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning. I hope the author's strategy helps someone, but it assumes you have the motivation but not the methodology.
Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning. I hope the author's strategy helps someone, but it assumes you have the motivation but not the methodology.
There's a power in simply accepting that it's just a feeling, whether you're tired, motivated, hungry... The feeling that you want instead, is a sort of disassociation. The stronger the feeling, the harder it will be. And then you just do the thing you need to do despite lacking motivation or being tired or whatever.
There's something liberating about it that is a bit difficult to put into words. Like "fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway". Sounds a bit stupid, but it's not entirely wrong.
However it's not a magic trick, but rather a kind of thought muscle you can try to train so to speak. It works for me increasingly, despite being quite terrible at this kind of thing. Or rather two muscles: One is creating a distance/objectivity to your feeling or state of mind, the other is to start the action. Sometimes the second part is almost automatic once you do the first part well from my experience.
I even gave an example in my article about this for initial cleaning, specifically with emails. We usually wait for a day when we feel motivated to sort everything out, but that day never comes, and we end up never doing the task. The idea is to have one micro-task every day, like processing a maximum of five emails. Or even five separate tasks of one email each. And on a day when you really have no motivation, you just push yourself to handle one overdue email.
- get up with alarm - make the bed - shave - take vitamins - read 5 pages
Checking off 10 small tasks right in the morning sets me for a productive mood.