Renewing Motivation

One of the things that I hear a lot of fellow indie developers talk about is how hard it can be to stop working at the end of the day.

They talk about how hard it is to not open their laptops for a few minutes in the evening to fix a quick bug or write down a quick note. It can sound like these people are infinitely motivated and always ready to go.

My experience is often the opposite.

I have to set myself a task to work on consciously. I have to convince myself that now is in fact the best time to work on this task, and I have to ensure that I don't get sidetracked while working on that specific task.

This always feels like it’s a huge contrast compared to the “infinitely motivated indie developer”.

On motivated days things are great. I can sit down and start working immediately and nothing will stop me until I feel like it's time to stop or until I’ve reached my goals for the day. On days where motivation is lacking… I might barely get through my inbox. And of course, that makes me feel bad.

So what do I do to avoid that?

First and foremost: I found it's okay to be not motivated. It's okay to want to procrastinate, and it's certainly alright to not work a full eight hours in a day.

In my experience what works really well is giving myself some tasks at the start of the day. They should be smaller tasks, but they should be tasks that are important and big enough that they have to be done.

If I’m lacking motivation I can at least tell myself “I have to send this invoice” or “I have to reply to this email” or ”I need to get a newsletter written today”. To me these are the kinds of tasks that I consider important. For you, different tasks might be important so that’s something for you to figure out.

Once I’ve assigned the tasks, I start a 25-minute Pomodoro timer. Once I start that timer it means that I must start working. It’s my stepping stone to begin working and stop wasting time on social media or other non-work stuff.

I think at this point it’s good to note that I’ve already limited notifications from a lot of apps, and getting them isn’t what prevents me from having a productive day. I’m pretty good at ignoring notifications when they do pop up.

Once the 25 minutes are up, I take a 5-minute break to do whatever I want to do and then I start another timer.

Whenever I'm lacking motivation these timers are truly a blessing to help me get going.

The trick here really is to do two things:

1. Have something that is very important to do; you can’t skip that.
2. Start your day with an important task and start the timer immediately.

Don't skip the timer because you think "Oh this is a 2-minute task and I don't know what to do next”. Start the timer do the 2-minute task and then figure out what to do next.

With this technique, I can get 2-4 hours of active work and do more than I could in 2 or 3 days where I’m not doing anything to help me focus. And that’s a really good feeling.

I know that this approach is not for everybody, and I know that not everybody needs this. Not everybody is wired the same way.

I'm convinced that not every successful person is an endless motivation machine that struggles to stop working. I think it may be the opposite: most people struggle with motivation and procrastination in one way or another.

These are the tips that work for me. Hopefully, some of them may help you. If you have some techniques of your own, I'd love to hear them!

Donny

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🎶 Currently on repeat 🎶

If you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I play guitar. I'm a huge music lover and want to share this with you. In this section I will share a new album that I've been enjoying a lot every week.

From First To Last - Genesis I somehow completely missed that From First To Last had started releasing new music after not releasing anything for a really long time. It’s hard to pick which single to share out of three really good new songs so I just went with the first one they released. Enjoy! And if you enjoy this one, make sure to go find the other songs on your music service of choice. Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Music

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