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Trying to Stay Motivated

Trying to Stay Motivated

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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.

 

Atomic Habits

Atomic Habits

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This term in PGP we started reading a new book. Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book is a guide to forming and keeping good habits. My task was to read the book and have it finished by January 2020. I know, welcome to the 20s! The book was an easy read and it had some great stories from people and their life experiences and a lot of good research was put into the book. It was divided into four laws. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying. This post is my first thoughts on the book after reading it.

The First Law: Make it Obvious 

How can you make a change if you don’t know what you’re already doing? In chapter one Make it Obvious, understanding your current habits is the first step in making or breaking new ones. James Clear’s idea of the habit scorecard was a brilliant idea for figuring out what it is you do on an average day. Using his format from the book, I outlined a typical day for me. Then I labelled whether it was a good habit, a neutral one or a bad one. from there I was able to decide what needed to be changed.

I noticed that I waste a lot of time doing aimless things like going on my phone when instead I could be reading, drawing or even watching tv which I find much more engaging than being on my phone.

The best way to start a new habit is to insert the one you want to start alongside the one you already do!

“after [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”

The one habit I have been focusing on adding to my daily routine is to read more. After this video popped up on my youtube recommended, I was inspired even more to start reading for 30 minutes every night.

I found that the best time for me to read is before bed. Reading puts me to sleep instead of keeping me awake like when I am on my phone. Using the habit stacking formula I inserted reading into my nightly routine.

“After [putting my phone on the charger], I will [read for 30 minutes.]”

Habit stacking from James Clear’s Atomic Habits

After a couple of nights passed by I assessed my situation. I still wasn’t reading every night. The problem wasn’t the reading, I could do that just fine. It was the fact that once I was done, I would check my phone again. I charge it right beside my bed and it is so easy for me to reach over and grab it. I needed to redesign my environment in order to succeed in making a new habit. Now my phone charges on my desk away from my bed and I place my book on my pillow so I can’t forget.

With my phone away from my bed it eliminates the temptation. The secret to self-control isn’t being strong. It’s not having the cue to prompt the response.

 

The Second Law: Make it Attractive

Starting new habits can be hard. I’ve had a hard time getting into the habit of reading more because I feel like reading is something I HAVE to do if I want to read for books. But in reality its something I GET to do. I love reading and when I do I feel a rush of dopamine from knowing my reading skills and getting stronger. As James Clear describes it. I’m currently in stage A of the Dopamine Feedback Loop. The rush of dopamine comes when I get the reward. For me, the reward of reading is seeing the progression I’ve made in the book.

Combining habit stacking with James Clear’s concept of temptation bundling, I was able to create a routine to increase the sense of reward I get from reading. The temptation bundling formula looks like this.

  1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]
  2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT]

James Clear quotes phycologist David Premack who says “more probable behaviours will reinform less probable behaviour”. So my nightly reading habit now looks like this;

  1. After [putting my phone on the charger], I will [read for 30 minutes]
  2. After [reading for 30 minutes], I will [get a good nights sleep]

I really liked what Atomic Habits said about friends and family being helpful when creating a new habit. While I was on a plane ride to Montreal. My friend and I got to talking about how we want to spend less time on our phones. Together we decided that every time we see each other, which is twice a week, we will tell each other our daily average screen time. That way we can hold each other accountable and try and reduce our screen time.

The Third Law: Make it Easy

Both this video and James Clear’s book mention that starting a new habit doesn’t have to be a big leap. If you want to read more books, start by reading one page a day. Once you have formed a habit of doing that, bump it up to two pages. Keep building up your habit slowly. I found this method didn’t really work for me. Reading for 30 minutes is already the path of least effort for me and that has been my starting point. Eventually, I will go up from there.

Following the two minute rule. My ritual for reading each night is the moment I put my book on my pillow. It takes less than two minutes to accomplish and I’ve locked myself into following through with the task.

The Fourth Law: Make it Satisfying

Tracking your habits is a great way to stay on top of a habit. To ensure I kept up with my reading every night, I would put a little checkmark on my wall calendar to show that I read that night. I liked what James had to say about never missing twice. No one is perfect so falling out of habits happens. The best thing you can do is to get back into it as soon as you can. If I miss reading one night, I will try my best not to miss it for a second time.

I like telling my mom about my accomplishments. So it seemed fit to make her my accountability partner for my reading goal. The consequence for not completing my goal is that I have to give up my phone for 2 hours after school. I had her sign the contract and we agreed to the deal.

My thoughts

When someone hands me a self-help book I’m always a bit reluctant to read it because I don’t feel like I need help. But after reading Atomic Habits I saw things a lot different than I had before. James Clear does amazing research for his book and the personal stories he tells really helped me out while journeying through my own habit-forming. I am excited to dive deeper into the ideas of this book and draw from it throughout the year.

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