Being motivated to do things has always been something I’ve struggled with. When I find something new and exciting to do I get motivated but eventually that motivation fades. I took up embroidery over the quarantine but that’s a faded hobby now. I look back at my supplies and think, I should get back to that one day. Then I never do.

While searching James Clear’s website for interesting articles to write this blog post about, I was intrigued by his articles on motivation. Like I said, I struggle with staying motivated, so his article titled, Motivation: The Scientific Guide on How to Get and Stay Motivated piqued my interest.

In his article, he talks about habitual rituals. Habitual rituals are routines you do before the actual task. It’s like a cue to start reading, writing or starting your workday.

With the quartine in effect, I’ve lost all sense of routine. I don’t go to a physical school or to after school activities and my life has become a mess that I’ve been ignoring. I need to find a balance between school and personal life when all of it is happening in my home. So I’d like to start some routines, some habitual rituals, and hopefully bring some structure into back into my life.

The Plan

Before I can come up with a plan I need to asses my life right now. My current routine looks like this.

8:30ish – wake up/morning routine

8:40ish – go back to bed and look at my phone or fall asleep again

9 or 9:40 – get up and find something to eat

10:30 – start doing homework or attending online classes

Then my homework ends up taking me almost all day or what feels like all day because I get distracted on top of the fact that I am a slow worker. When the day is almost over I lose my motivation to do personal fun things and that’s where the problem lays.

I don’t want to overwhelm myself with new routines so I’m gonna start simple. I need to start my day sooner so this is how I want it to go.

8:30 – wake up/morning routine

8:40 – leave my room and close the door behind me

This will become my cue telling me;

This is what I do before I START MY DAY.

It’s simple but after that, I can get something to eat and come back upstairs to start my workday. Hopefully starting my day earlier will make it end earlier too.

Time Blocking and Power Hours

I’ve gotten back into the habit of time blocking. It helps me process all the work I need to do that day and stick to a schedule. Motivation is hard to muster when so many decisions have to be made. So setting a schedule puts all of that on autopilot.

My teacher mentioned that she’s been working on a power hour system, 1 hour of work, 1-hour break and repeat. I thought I’d try that myself. In about 10 minutes I’m gonna take a break from writing this post to read a book for the book club my friends and I started. We’ll see how this power hour thing turns out but so far I’ve been working really hard on this post in anticipation of my break. I don’t feel dragged down from the hours of work I need to spend on this post because I get to have a break soon.

Staying Motivated

I don’t want to overwhelm myself with new habits and routines because as James clear said in his article, the key to getting motivated is to make it easy. Keep things in the optimal zone of difficulty so that it feels challenging but manageable. I want to work on starting my day earlier so that hopefully, it leaves me with more time during the day to do the other things I love. Once I get this habit down I will be adding new things into the mix but for now, I’ll stick to simply waking up early.