Motivation: A.I.M. To Achieve What You Want

In my experience I have found that many people procrastinate and/or don't carry through at all because they believe that they need to be motivatied to do a thing first in order for them to forge forward. This is the number one common misunderstanding in the science of success and achievement.

In my own life, I used to think that once I received the motivation to get started that I would do it then. One day I realized that this errant attitude caused me to miss out on a lot of wonderful things in life due to inaction. On this particular day a good friend called me to tell me that she had just finished her book manuscript and was in the process of finding an agent. I was happy for her, but as I hung up the telephone I also felt crushed. One of my projects at the time was also a book, but I had yet to sit down and write it. This is when I was introduced to the concept of Action, Ideas, Motivation, or A.I.M. for short.

The Motivation Cycle

This thought occurred to me "If I only work on this book project while I feel like it will take me forever".  This thought shocked me and that nearly ended my book writing project. Without the stimulating 'high' of motivation the task seemed to enormous for me to tackle. Give up! Give up! Pestered the little voice in my head. I think it is human nature to subconsciously take the easy route, to do the more pleasurable things in life and leave the difficult things to last or just hope they go away. I was torn between wanting to complete the book I had persevered with for so long and quitting all together so I could accomplish something easier.

I suppose my motivation cycle like most others would go from high to low. The high producing a burst of frantic effort and activity followed by a burn out where you are physically, mentally and creatively drained. I found this took a long time to recover from and it had a demotivating effect. The problem was the time when I was not motivated; I was not motivated a lot longer than I was motivated. Stoking up the motivation to write and continue pushing your brain to work after a hard days graft 'at the day job' is very difficult.

Just doing the time filling, wasteful things like watching TV takes its place all to easy.

Several months quickly passed me by, and my mind continued to troubled me about not continuing with the book and then . . .

A Eureka moment came at 4 o'clock one morning when I awoke with a moment of clarity that often follows a good night sleep when the mind does that marvelous peculiarity of unraveling and sorting the problems and discourse of the day.

The real issue was not how to get motivated more. It was what to do when I was not motivated.The question was how can I to motivate myself to work at something for an hour or two following a hard days work?  The answer was simple DON'T!  Don't wait for the motivation, just take some action every day whether you feel like it or not. The action to take is 'do the next task' and don't try to eat elephants whole! Split the project into smaller, bite sized, more manageable and less daunting chunks.

The Habit of Taking Action

In practice I found to my delight reduced periods of energy sapping high motivation and the inevitable unmotivated down time that followed. It was replaced with a steady state where you are achieving on a regular basis, motivated or not.

To start with, it will take will power and effort, but if you persevere and keep doing it, it will embed in your subconscious and become habitual. You will be able to carry out the task with hardly a conscious thought.

My preference was to come in from the day job, get a drink (green tea!) and then just do the next task, which could be research, writing up, editing, whatever useful task needed to be done (sharpening pencils does not count as a task!!!). Doing your scheduled tasks at the same time of day everyday trains your mind and body to anticipate what is going to happen next and become habit forming.

Once I had acquired this habit of taking action the new pages to the book started to accumulate along with new ideas and inspiration. Seeing the book starting to take shape after so long then motivated me to do more and help reinforce the habit of taking action.

If you want to achieve something just do the next task.  Ideas and motivation do not just happen you need to AIM for them by applying the concept of Action, Ideas, and Motivation in your daily life.

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