Since I have started this blog back up I have been searching for ways to push myself to get more consistency out of my production. My problem is a problem I think many people have: I think of an idea of something I want, I get motivated, I start doing it, then eventually I hit a wall and I lose interest, become bored or become frustrated with my lack of progress and I give up.
Sitting in bed last night thinking, after I had the micro failure of falling asleep when I got home instead of writing in this blog, I started to think what are some of the ways I can start to break this cycle that I know many of us find ourselves in.
Stop Trying to Conform to Someone Else’s Rules: One suggestion came from a friend of mine: stop trying to be so rigid in the way you create your posts. He suggested this after I told him I had a goal of 1500 to 2000 words in every post, have it immaculately researched and heavily edited. Putting in the time to create great content and a finished product is important, but who says something has to be 2000 words to be great content? Nobody really reads my blog anyway since I am starting out, so why create something so long when people are zoning out after 2 paragraphs? Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, focus on great content first and let that be the marker.
To add to that, I arrived at this arbitrary figure from another successful blog I was trying to emulate at the time. Why should his rules of success apply to me? They shouldn’t. Realizing this gave me the opportunity to free up my content to where my true interests really were and let the site evolve with the content not the reverse.
The Power of Showing Up: Another suggestion I have heard like from this writing cooperative article is just to show up, or in this case write. I am familiar with this concept after pushing myself to go to the gym for many years. It goes something like this: showing up is half the battle, most people’s fear of failure or some other self conceived fear, will prevent them from starting anything in the first place so if you can push yourself to start to execute, you may end up doing much more than you think. Ayodeji Awosika, who wrote the article in the link above, states:
When I started, I had no idea I’d write as much as I have or accomplish as much as I have.
Like you, I had a burning desire to unleash the thoughts I had stirring around in my head. I thought about writing for far too long before I decided to put words on the page.
Now, in the span of two years, Ayodeji has written 2 books and hundreds of blog posts. He notes that many of your first posts are going to be terrible, but that’s ok. Just going through the process day in and day out will hone your craft and showing up forces you to exercise your brain. Eventually this exercise will push you to seek out more knowledge to improve your skills and improve your content. The virtuous cycle will then continue.
How does any of this relate to the gym for me? I can recall many times where I had to drag myself to the gym because I thought I was dead tired but when I started to run or lift weights, the energy started to build and many times I blew past my goals for that day. Days later I would feel and see the results and my mood and desire to exercise again would increase. All because I showed up.
Enjoy the Small Wins: Another piece of advice I have found useful is to allow yourself to have and enjoy the small wins. When I started to do this, even after not having written in my blog for over a year, I started to feel better about myself and more confident. For example, I have created about 33 blog posts since 2016, that totals about 50,000 to 60,000 words, enough to write a 200 page book! Realizing that helped push me to take it up again and focus more on particular topics with the idea that one day I may have enough material on a particular topic to actually publish a book. Allow yourself the small wins, appreciate them and they will help push you forward.
Learn to Love the Process: This one comes from one of my favorite entrepreneurs and motivational speakers Gary Vaynerchuk. In this YouTube video, he talks to a caller about patience and learning to love the process. In turn, the process will love you back he says. The caller, a young woman from Buffalo, mentions that when she is a millionaire in less than 8 years at 25, she will come and shake Gary’s hand. Gary says, “I promise you that statement in itself made me 100% guarantee that you won’t.” The reason? Because she was just focusing on an arbitrary number as her end goal and not loving the hard work and the process of what is going to get her there. If you learn to love the process, it will refine your product, service or strategy and will propel you forward. But it will take patience and time, which doesn’t give much room for arbitrary goals and impatience.
Another gem from the same video is when the caller talks about what other people like Kylie Jenner and someone else she admires on instagram have achieved. Gary mentions, “Every minute you spend thinking about what someone else has is taking away from what you could be doing for yourself.” If that doesn’t motivate you to stop worrying about what others have I don’t know what will.
The Power of a (Five Year) Plan: This one isn’t so much about the plan as what the plan does for you and helps you organize yourself. I am including this one mostly because of an inspiring story I heard recently.
As part of stepping outside of my normal box, I joined the board of a charity last year . The founder had recently passed away and the board was busy searching for an Executive Director to replace the founder which kept us all quite busy. At the first charity event, I spoke to one of the employees, who gave me the inspiring story behind the founder, and how he had carried out a 5 year plan which grew the size of the charity enormously.
This charity has been around since the late 70’s and had remained small with a budget of a few hundred thousand and 3 to 5 employees for most of its life. 6 or so years ago, after 30 years of being small, the founder decided to make a 5 year plan and scale up the size. Within 5 years, the founder had grown to 100 employees, a $5 million budget, a new office and recognition from local politicians. I happened to bump into this organization when the founder reached out to me for financial advice on how to manage his payroll now that the size and scale of it had changed so dramatically.
In short, the story above was a testament to moving outside of your comfort zone and the power of a plan. According to this short video by Brian Tracy, a five year plan allows you to break down your long term goal into smaller and smaller steps until you have daily actionable and achievable goals in the short term. Learning to love the process and deriving motivation from achieving the small goals will help you to gain momentum and move further along towards the big goals you seek.
So What Are My Goals?: So here goes nothing, I am going to break down my goals for the next 5 years:
- Double My Income – My income has been flat on an overall basis for a number of years. No fault of anyone’s but my own. Be it a promotion or additional income, doubling it in 5 years is definitely achievable.
- Have Another Child – Totally within my power again, no matter what my relationship situation is.
- Make Enough From a Side Project That it Can Support My Family – This one seems like the biggest challenge to me personally. It will take some trial and error and prioritizing what will make additional income vs time wasting activities. However many people have taken this path and not just supported themselves but become wealthy with it. There is no reason to say you or I could not do different.
So there you have it, putting my goals out there for the universe and hoping to inspire a little motivation in the few people who have gotten this far. Don’t let the fire die.
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