By Stephanie Christie
Creative Development & Creative Coach at Creative Waikato
In these strange times, it’s okay for your motivation to be lower than usual. But the technique we often use to pump up our motivation – telling ourselves off – is more exhausting than inspiring. Instead, you can use your abundant creativity to help generate the motivation you need.
First, you need to identify the things that really need to be done today – what is most important and urgent.
Here’s one way to to this:
-
Do a brain dump of all the tasks that you wish you were motivated to do today.
-
Cut a piece of paper into strips.
-
Write out all the tasks, one task per strip.
-
Physically shuffle the tasks around so that the more important ones go to the top and the least to the bottom.
-
Choose a few tasks from the top to focus on today (remember to ask yourself to do less than you’d normally do).
Now comes the creative bit! Your mission is to find ways to make each task more attractive and doable, by making it more FUN.
You could:
-
Race the clock (can you do the task in 40 minutes?)
-
Dress up (the sillier the better)
-
Do the task in a different space
-
Make the task into a game (invent a point system for emails)
-
Invite a friend to hang out via Zoom while you both do tasks
-
Ask yourself: How would an alien approach this task?
-
Insert your own creative idea here…
You can also think of a creative reward to give yourself immediately after you finish a task. This might include: watching a music video on Youtube, playing a drawing game online with a friend, or allowing yourself 15 minutes of Instagram engagement (set a timer if you’re likely to get lost in there…)
In between tasks, take breaks which activate your body and refresh your mind.
You could go for a walk and take photos of the signs of spring, or put on loud music and try out your disco moves. Use your creativity to add spice to the self-care you need.
You have creative super-powers! This is an opportunity to put them into action, to motivate yourself to do what you need to do today.