How to motivate yourself

WANITA NICOL, PERSONAL TRAINER, WRITER AND EDITOR

1 Break it up.

Divide your long-term goals into a series of short-term goals. It’s easier to stay motivated for shorter periods of time, and regular little wins make you want to keep going. For example, if you want to run a 10 km race in six months’ time, set a weekly goal of clocking three short runs of 2–5 km each, depending on your current fitness level. Or if you have a big assignment due, set a smaller goal of writing one page a day.

2 Be practical.

Give yourself a deadline, but make it realistic. When you don’t have a deadline it’s way too easy to put something off, but if the deadline is impossibly tight you’re also likely to give up before you even get started because you know you’ve been set up to fail. A daily to-do list helps you focus because you know there are certain tasks you need to tick off by the end of the day. But if your to-do list is unrealistically long, you may find you hardly accomplish the tasks because you know from the outset the goal is unattainable.

3 Start small.

Sometimes you just need to trick yourself! This works well for things like exercising in winter. Tell yourself you’re just going to do a 10-minute jog – if you reach the 10-minute mark and you want to turn around and come home, at least you did 10 minutes. But chances are once you’re 10 minutes in you’ll get into the zone and want to keep going. Similarly, if you have a report due at the end of the week but you can’t formulate your thoughts, open a blank document and aim just to write an unstructured list of points you want to bring across in your report. You’ll probably find that after a few minutes your brain gets into the zone and your unstructured list starts formulating itself into well-structured sentences and paragraphs.

❛Enjoy nature, listen to your favourite song and sing along, enjoy a meal with family or friends, exercise, focus on the here and now.❜