What’s your approach to getting motivated to start writing that important pitch document (or even that blog post you’ve been meaning to do for a while!)? Do you focus on clearing your desk, clearing your schedule and clearing your mind to allow for uncluttered and unimpeded creativity? Or do you prefer to motivate yourself by imagining how great you’ll feel when you’ve finished? Writer’s block is a perennial problem that we’ve all faced at one time or another. But how often have you found that you spend so long getting everything ‘just so’ before starting that you never actually start?
So, what’s secret to unlocking motivation and powering through the problem? In his book, The Antidote (subtitle: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking), Oliver Burkeman suggests that traditional advice from motivational gurus to seek inspiration to maximize motivation could often be part of the problem. He points out that feeling like doing something and actually doing it are in fact two different things. And because they’re different, they don’t have to go together. Simply put: you don’t have to feel like doing something to do something.
This approach to motivation might seem counterintuitive, but rings true with advice from many prolific authors who recommend routine and discipline as the keys to success. This focus on mechanics fits with the increasingly prominent strategy of mindfulness: allowing positive and negative emotions to exist alongside the task at hand, but not to interrupt it.
So the next time you’re really not feeling inspired to start that report, take a deep breath, recognise you’re not in the mood and start it anyway!