18. The struggle to sustain motivation

I have skipped two days of #100NakedWords in the last one week and I feel worried. I have a bad habit of committing only halfway to my own challenge. I failed to wake up at 5 am every day. Failed to clean my inbox every day. Failed to read an hour every day.

I will get overly excited in the beginning but quickly see my motivation fizzle out a few weeks in.

I don’t want this to happen for #100NAkedWords. I need to do something about it.

My first step to overcoming this is to forgive myself. Many times I fell to the domino effect of failure. My mind would whisper “you’ve screwed up this time, so why bother to continue?”. And I discontinued. So instead of beating myself up, this time, I will accept that it’s fine to make mistakes. Everyone does it. It’s not the end of the world and I should continue.

The next step is to anticipate roadblocks. I can’t rely on pure motivation alone and expect everything to go well. I need to realize that it will get uncomfortable in the middle. Problems will come up. I will be tempted to give up.

Once I’ve set my expectation right, I will create a system to sustain my drive. Triggers and processes that ensure I stick to my challenge, regardless of how I feel. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Create smaller milestones. I will split my 100-day challenge to 4 stages of 25 days each. Each time I hit a milestone, I will spend $100 to pamper myself. I’ll get a good massage, enjoy fine dining, go to gold class cinemas.
2. Get an accountability partner. I need to find someone to do the challenge with me. Someone who can check in regularly, give peer pressure and make me feel guilty for not keeping to my promise.
3. Create a stick. Research showed that potential loss is a greater motivator than potential reward. So each time I skipped one day of writing, I will buy my accountability partner a meal.
4. Create a strict schedule. To make time, and not find time. On weekdays, I will always be working on the first draft during my morning commute and post it by 9 pm. On weekends, I will post my writing by 12 pm.
5. Envision success. Look into the future and think about how good I would feel for accomplishing the challenge. Picture myself receiving all the benefits, feeling proud, confident and improved. Have this vision so vivid that every day, I will be so excited to start I didn’t even have the chance to consider stopping.