Motivate Yourself
 By Terry M. Blair

There are days when it’s tempting to swat off the alarm clock and hide under the covers rather than face another round of luring, serving and pleasing customers.

But for most of us, that’s not a viable option. If you’re a small-business entrepreneur, you know that if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. A day off generally means a day without profit.

How can you overcome the occasional impulse to retreat, rather than charge into the new day? For that matter, how can you ratchet up your internal mechanisms to get stuff done, rather than stare at the wall once you are back on the job?

The problem is two-fold. The first part is the deeper motivation. Why do you do what you do? Next there’s the more pragmatic motivation. Why do this particular task? The first is about goals. The second is about strategy.

J.P. Morgan once said, “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” The real reason is the goal that motivates you. The good reason is your strategic motivation.

First, the deep stuff: goals.
Goals provide focus. Setting a goal was the most significant step when you decided to go into business. Your goal established your destination.

Business is a journey. There’s no reason to put up with winding roads, obstacles and pit stops unless you want to get to your destination.

Your original goal – whether it was financial independence, being your own boss, doing what you love, serving others or any other valid reason for going into business – is the reason you do what you do. If you lose sight of your goal, then what you do becomes merely the drudgery of a job, not a calling.

When you are tugged by the twin devils of sloth and apathy, take time to remind yourself why it is that you’re in business in the first place. The real reason. If you can’t recall, the next step won’t help much.

Next, the strategies.
Now that you’re back on track, here are some practical tricks to keep your internal engine purring: strategies that work.

• Save the work you enjoy most for times when you’re frustrated or bored.

• It’s more difficult to get up and go when you’re the only witness to your sloth, so don’t isolate yourself. Force contact with others even if it’s only telephone chat or a business lunch.

• Find a kindred soul and create a pact to keep each other accountable. When you feel sluggishness coming on, call on your accountability partner for a pep talk or even a needed rebuke. When you do the same in return, it can be nearly as effective for combating your own laziness.

• Set short-term, measurable objectives. Don’t fall into the trap of assessing your day’s effort with vague feelings of accomplishment or failure. Was today’s objective to meet a deadline? Turn a prospect into a client? Save X dollars by switching telephone services? Such concrete objectives can be measured. Vague feelings can’t.

• Remember the smiley faces from your school days? They served a purpose as old as commerce: reward. You’re well beyond the smiley face stage, but you will never outgrow your appreciation of rewards.
  
  Set up a reward system and stick to it. Reward yourself for accomplishing a task, completing a job or landing a new client. The reward can be as innocent as an ice cream sundae or mid-week movie. Or it can be quasi-momentous, like a spending spree at your favorite haberdashery. But don’t reward yourself unless you achieve your objective.

• Don’t forget one of the most basic motivators of all: looking forward to it being done. For some of those unglamorous, dreaded chores, sometimes the best we can hope for is to be rid of it. But that’s an excellent motivation for doing it.

(Posted April 2006)

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