Do you wish you were more motivated?
Do you ever wish you were more motivated? I hear this often from my clients, and I want to tell you how I coach them to get things done anyway.
The first question I’ll ask is: “If you were motivated, what would you be doing?”
I asked this last week to someone in a workshop I was leading for graduate students. “I’d be writing more consistently on my thesis,” they answered.
A definition of success we can all work with
Many people think, talk, and write about success all the time. But have you ever seen a precise definition?
It’s easy to say “success is relative,” and in a sense that’s true. We all want different things from life. But this isn’t a very useful insight. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a single way to define and measure success that we could each use in our personal and professional lives?
How to Think More Productively: A Cheat Sheet
When people learn that I’m a time management and productivity coach, they often grill me about the most effective tricks and tools. “What’s the best system? What apps or planner should I use? Got any hacks I can try?”
They’re asking the wrong questions.
Don’t get me wrong — systems like Bullet Journaling and Getting Things Done are excellent. But if you’re struggling to be productive, overhauling your process won’t help you much. To really achieve sustainable productivity, you must first learn to manage your thoughts.
I challenge you to stop complaining
Last Tuesday I biked to my co-working space around 11:30am and realized, just as I sat down, that I had forgotten my lunch. Delicious leftovers sat uselessly in the fridge at home, and I had to be on a call in twenty minutes. (Cool story, right?)
When faced with this situation in the past, I would’ve spent at least a minute complaining to myself. The internal monologue might have sounded something like this: