On Motivation

It is the penultimate week of the Easter holidays (Warwick give us 5 weeks; don't ask). I have a grand total of 17,500 words to write (this will be small to some and large to others; it's all relative), three exams to revise for. A CV to complete, job applications to fill in and emails to send. 

I woke up yesterday morning with a horrendous migraine and could do nothing but re-watch Gilmore Girls and drink hot water in bed. I know that the latter part of this sounds pretty pleasant, but the former was awful and in total it left me feeling extremely guilty about having done little to no work. The majority of my deadlines are six weeks away and a good 12,000 of those words have been written. Yet still, I felt guilty. I lacked absolutely any motivation which also added to the guilt.

But motivation is hard to find. I'm one of those people that if I want a break, I'm going to have a break. I know that I'm not going to be productive if I want to watch Four In A Bed or go and make hot chocolate. I have productive periods of about 20-40 minutes at a time; then I need a break. Working like this means that I can then gather a bit more motivation in each break. Read an article about the girl that got accepted into all 8 Ivy League schools. Or the blogger that is in the same position as me but still runs an amazing blog. Or just lust after this bar cart.

Yet when you do have motivation, there are so many things you can get done. You can finish that essay. You can beast that exam. You can finally get rid of all those Law Firm brochures (I recycled all of my Law career hopes and dreams of 2013 yesterday). You can tick off some of your To Do List. And it doesn't really take that much to do it either. If you got out of bed, you're already basically 75% there anyway! 

My diary has become a mass of day to day to do lists. In fact more like day to day goals. Finish Nietzsche Essay. Make revision timetable etc. It's all about those small steps. Once you know what the steps themselves are, the rest is actually pretty easy.

And if you're like me and your main problem is actually making the steps; read: actually doing it, then really the only thing holding you back is you. 

And remember. Today is Tuesday. We've already conquered Monday!

xoxo