How to stay motivated at all times: Duck soup tactics

When you think about quitting, recall the reason for what you started!

You might be an optimistic person who never gets disappointed and show up yourself as a motivated person always. But as a matter of fact, you can never stay motivated at all times. Often you come across such situations where you start losing hope or think to quit or get tired or look things as too complicated and ultimately admit it that “I cannot do this”.

But don’t worry! Here I have brought some easy ways for you which would help you to stay motivated at all times and would satisfy you psychologically. Just apply all these tactics or any one of these to your daily life and you will see the difference.

• Chunking

Chunking is a tactic being used in cognitive psychology for improving memory performance. Most of the people have difficulty in memorizing the long string of numbers like 0934873456. To solve this problem, the chunking method is used where a long string is broken into pieces like 093-487-34-56. This way, you can memorize it easily.

So now questions is, how this chunking method will help you to stay motivated? Well, it helps you a lot! As it is the best strategy to keep you motivated in the completion of tough and long projects.

For example, you have to submit a long and big report in a week but you keep delaying it. You just think about the 30+ pages of boring corporate drivel that you have to complete in just six days & you shudder by just thinking about it. Therefore, you decide to do something else rather than working on the report. Now, what if you break this giant report into tiny chunks?

Break your project into smaller parts based on the days left like writing the introduction on day 1, at day 2 you would write section 2 of the report, and so on…. This way, you will stay motivated to complete the work as for every day there is a small amount of work for you and it doesn’t look difficult to do.

• Visualization

Visualization is also a very effective and easy tactic which helps you to stay motivated and positive about your goals. It follows the simple principle for motivation which says that the more concrete, specific, & available your mental representation regarding your goal & its advantages are, the more you will feel motivated and energetic to achieve that goal.

For example, review two situations for losing weight and to stay motivated:

Situation 1: Doctor advised me to lose weight as it is good for the health. So, I must try to eat healthy and better…

Situation 2: The doctor advised me to lose weight as it is good for your health. And it would be much fun when I would jump and swing and run & play with kids without feeling any fatigue.

Which situation would give more motivation? Obviously situation 2. That’s how the visualization about the results of your efforts would make you stay motivated at all times and you would never get distracted from your ultimate goal.

Spare some time in any two days of the week for visualization about your achievements and write it down to make it clear. This would help you a lot to increase your motivation level.

• Ulysses Pact

Ulysses Pact is named after an ingenious hero of Trojan war. This is a tactic for boosting your motivation in which you held yourself accountable for sticking to a specific goal even in the hard times.

The main point in this technique is that you make a choice, when things are easy, in present. Which binds you to accomplish some tasks in the future (in hard times).

For example, you make a plan to work on a new project with your friend. And you both decide to work on it for three hours daily. But if anyone fails to come for work he has to pay $20 for it. And for this, you keep a series of signed checks in the drawer from both sides for future mistakes.

In other words, Ulysses pact aids you in boosting your morale and to stay motivated whatever the situation in the future it would be and locks your behavior for the future ahead of time.

• Distraction list

Distraction is one of the biggest hurdles in your capability to stay motivated & to achieve your goal in time. These hurdles can be external or internal. External distraction can be an unexpected text or call from your spouse while your working hours, old friend bumps at the office while you have a full plan to work, etc.

The other reason for distraction is an internal distraction that can be proved to be the most destructive and powerful one. Like tension about tomorrow’s meeting can distract from today’s work, daydreaming about your fitness look, replaying the frustrating conversation with someone that happened yesterday can also distract you from your work. You can manage these distractions and can stay motivated by following these ways:

• Keep a notebook & pen with you while setting out a task
• Whenever you face an internal distraction write it down & focus back at your work
• After the completion of the task, review quickly at the distraction list & make a plan to address it.

Never ever ignore these distractions because they will constantly continue to poke you and keep distracting you from your work. Therefore, deal with this issue first so that you may stay motivated to what you are thriving for.

• Social support

When you want to build a new habit or want to start a new project which requires constant attention you are required to stay motivated all the time and never lose hope. To achieve this objective an important technique is to have social support.

This means that having someone who supervises your tasks and questions about it daily that either you have completed your today’s task or not. Such a person is normally known as the “accountability buddy”.

When you know that there is someone who would ask at the end of the day about your progress regarding your tasks, you would definitely try to ace the set goals. Social support is a powerful source of motivation & encouragement that will urge you to keep working on it. So that you may not feel embracement you stay motivated to complete your tasks.

• Seinfeld strategy

This is another powerful tactic to stay motivated at all times. This strategy is named after Jerry Seinfeld who presented an idea about how to remain consistent and to stay motivated to your work.

According to this strategy, design a large wall calendar having a schedule for a whole year on just one page & then hang that calendar on the prominent wall. Next step to this strategy is having a big red marker.

Depending on the tasks for every day, mark the completed task daily with that red marks as X. After some days you will have a proper chain of Xs. Keep completing the daily tasks and the chain will continue to grow and will get longer every-day.

With the passage of time, you’ll start loving this chain and will not want to break it just like the Instagram streaks. Just do not break this chain! Seinfeld Strategy is a powerful tactic in the sense that it is the Double Motivator as it motivates in 2 different ways at the same time.

Crossing each day as successful gives you the feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment as well as you keep acing your goals. 

• Gentle self-talk

There is no one who can motivate you most effectively than yourself. Treat yourself gently, give yourself a margin. No one is perfect so is you? Stop being judgmental about yourself. Blaming yourself all the time for your mistakes is not a good habit. It takes out all the remaining energy as well.

Therefore, gentle self-talk is an important technique to stay motivated no matter what the situation is. For example, if you fail to complete a report in one day. The negative self-talk would be, “I’m totally a failure. I can’t even complete this simple report on time” & so on. While the gentle self-talk would be, “I couldn’t complete today’s task. I should increase my efficiency and I have to ace my desired goals.” See the difference.

So, if you want to stay motivated at all times, and don’t want to distract your thoughts from your set goals, adopt any of the above-stated tactics to boost your motivation level. Because, the more motivated you are, the more close to your destination you would be!

What are your tactics to stay motivated and positive all the time? Tell us in the comments section below. Your feedback would be highly appreciate.