Keeping Motivation Alive

On 10/24/11 the group discussed strategies for keeping motivation alive.


First, the group members identified motivating factors, such as:

• interacting with others and having supportive social structure
• need to earn money
• doing things that are positive and "good for life"
• ego gratification
• having external structure, such as job
• external pressure, as well as influence and encouragement from others
• having company
• creating spacial organization that is conducive for staying productive (eg., uncluttered desk)

Among interfering factors and obstacles that make it difficult to stay motivated, group members named the following:

• distractions
• disorganization
• inertia 
• anxiety and often - ungrounded fears
• depression and hopelessness
• difficulty breaking the project down into manageable pieces
• financial reasons
• lack of or inaccurate information

In group's opinion, a motivated person is:

• organized and focused
• clear about his/her goals
• persistent and consistent
• disciplined
• passionate
• optimistic
• flexible and adaptable
• creative
• has strong sense of self
• has some success

Group members shared that sometimes they have difficulty with generating motivation to start or to maintain the project. They agreed that although we might think that motivation should go before the action, in many cases taking some action, no matter how small, can help to bring motivation alive and lead to more action. 

Among some of the strategies for creating and maintaining motivation are:

• not overthinking
• committing to small tasks/amounts of time devoted to task (for example, if it is hard to motivate self to clean the room, you can commit to 10 min of cleaning instead of trying to clean the entire space)
• getting help
• setting up the system that will create some external pressure (for example, committing to a friend to finish the project by certain deadline, asking friend to check in re that)
• finding something new and fresh about what you are doing if you start feeling bored with it
• identifying consequences for not following up with the project.

Overall, group members agreed that generating and keeping motivation alive requires effort and, well, motivation.