Motivation is easy. You know the feeling. Like something inside of you just clicks into place.
You're ready and raring to go work on the Great American novel, your newest song that'll hit the billboard top-40, or, hardest of all…
…cleaning out the closet of dispair. You know the one.
Writing about the joy he felt as a writer, the existentialist writer Albert Camus noted that most of these "come at the moment of conception, at the instant when the subject reveals itself, at those delicious moments when imagination and intelligence are fused."
That feeling though is fleeting. It slips through your fingers like sand.
It never, ever lasts.
That flash of motivation gives way to actually having to get the thing created, or as he calls it "the execution, that is to say, a long period of hard work".
During that long period, it’s easy to find reasons not to do something.
Maybe it's too much time between writing sessions. Maybe you didn't sleep well the night before.
Either way, when motivation passes, you just don't feel like doing it anymore, not like before.
Your motivation has failed you. It always will at some point.
Personally, I'm easily motivated.
Put on Denzel's speech in Remember the Titans or Eye of the Tiger and I can be motivated to do anything from working out to organizing my book collection to rediscovering fire...
Well, at least it does until that initial drive wears off, then I have to rely on more reliable forces:
Persistence and discipline.
Motivation can get you going when the starter's pistol fires.
Persistence will carry you, kicking and screaming across the finish line.
Motivation happens on its own (and it's great when it does)
Discipline helps make it happen even when you don’t want to.
But how?
Show up: this is easier said than done. If you're trying to write, then sit down in the chair. Don't let yourself move until you've written. Trying to work out? Get to the gym, don't leave without having done something. Be where you need to be and let habit take over.
Have an endgame: Mountain climbing would be much harder if there wasn't a summit to aim for. You'd just be climbing endlessly. Know what you're trying to accomplish and when you'll have accomplished it. Set goals.
Delay gratification: No matter what you're doing, you'll need a break. Just don't take one the second the thought occurs to you. Put the rest off for just a little longer.
Stop listening to that voice that's telling you not to do something or trying to find all those juicy reasons to do something else.
Just do it anyway.
You can always just sit in a corner and, eventually, you'll be driven to work by boredom.