NickVenturella.com 7-10-16

Motivation - just spend 5 minutes on something

July 10, 2016

Is your life a bit hectic?Here's what I have going on...I am trying to get ready for a business trip.I'm frantically finishing up a big project that culminates at the conference I'll be attending.My 1 year old just had surgery to put tubes in his ears (because of chronic ear infections), so we're monitoring his health/reaction to the surgery - you know, because he can't really tell us how he feels just yet (not in words anyway).My wife and I just found out our cat has diabetes and now I'm giving him insulin shots twice a day.And this morning, my wife, the humane animal lover that she is, found a bird with a broken wing in our front yard and immediately took it to the emergency animal clinic.All this, and I'm just not feeling inspired to write a newsletter that I think is worthy of your attention.As it came time to write this newsletter I was seriously depleted of any motivation to do so.Then I remembered the book I just finished reading, Charles Duhigg's, Smarter, Better, Faster - The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.Duhigg's book examines 8 areas that people (anyone) can put some effort into in order to become more productive in their lives. Motivation is the first area he camps out in.In the Appendix of the book Duhigg gives the reader his take on how he has applied several of the lessons in the book.For Motivation, Duhigg was having trouble getting himself to reply to his daily flow of incoming email requests. A common issue for many of us.His solution was to spend a short amount of time just getting started with one sentence in a reply to one of the emails. It was really meant as a way to simply get himself to take some level of action.What happened though, was that he ended up banging out all the email replies he had by keeping them short and remembering that he can control his involvement in many of the requests that the emails were asking of him. In other words, he didn't have to commit to all the requests, or he could commit with some conditions so as not to burden all his available time.Another author I enjoy, Bob Baker - a music marketing and creative entrepreneur author/speaker - refers to Motivation similarly in that the "getting started" on anything is the hardest part.Baker's method, which I love, is to tell himself that he'll only spend 5 minutes doing whatever it is that he knows he needs to do, but is not motivated to do.Low and behold, he works for 20 minutes, a half-hour, two hours or more sometimes.  This is because once you get started you trick your brain to slide past the wall of anxiety that was telling you the task is going to be a bear and overwhelming.Then, like most anxiety's, once you're in the thing you had anticipatory anxiety about, you realize it's not so bad, you focus, you engage and you get things done.That accomplishment gives you confidence and that confidence can help you stay motivated for future tasks.Hence, I just told myself I would spend 5 minutes writing this newsletter and I've now spent about 20 minutes sharing something I think/hope you'll find useful.I always appreciate your attention!  And as usual, you can always hit reply and share what's on your mind.Have a great week!