Saturday, May 27, 2023
Motivating yourself
You have five hours to do two hours worth of work. What are your options?
You could spend three and a half hours procrastinating and worrying about how difficult the work will be. That will force you to spend the last ninety minutes rushing and making compromises to produce a substandard result.
You could fill the entire five hours working at a leisurely pace, taking breaks, giving in to distractions, working a little more. That will get the job done, and waste much of your precious time.
Or, you could start right away, focus intently on the work, and persist until you’ve achieved an excellent result. In that case you’ll have three hours for something else, free of worry, free of anxiety, with no deadline hanging over you.
It can be difficult motivating yourself to get started early, and to push all the way through. So instead of thinking just about getting started, think of the entire experience and how you’ll feel at the end.
The time is yours, the choice is yours, the work is there to be done. What approach will you decide to take?
— Ralph Marston