Greetings, blog friends!

Happy Saturday!

Today, we are gonna talk about finding you motivation.

Or forcing it.

Which is sometimes the same thing.

Why do I say that?

Because often when we say we aren’t motivated, we are lying to ourselves because we simply don’t feel like doing the task.

Take this blog, and the four blogs I wrote before it.

Before I go into that lets rewind into this process I have used to force myself to do some work on the Blog.

As you may or may not recall I told myself I would keep a list of blog ideas to write, and when I got a spare second, I would write the blogs out, and have them for when I don’t have anything scheduled, or to schedule for busy times for me, etc.

This also helps for things like, take 4/20- I will want a whole special blog for posting that day- but I need to write it ahead of time…So: I made a list of all these blog ideas, and the list got full. Not like, oh my god so many ideas, but like, the sheet I was keeping the list on ran out of lines, so I told myself: “Self, get your ass in gear and write.”

The last blog idea had been how to motivate yourself, and I realized the whole list acted as a great example for how to finish the blog, and here I am.

The list got full, which means I need to write, but that didn’t change my motivation levels, AT ALL.

But you know what did?

Just forced myself to do it.

I opened a new draft, and forced myself to type the title. I forced myself to jot notes, to just type notes on the file, to fill in later. Just forced myself to write the words.

I finished that first blog, and I opened the next file. Type the title…but my warmed up brain already had a fun intro paragraph in mind, so I type that out, and tell myself I will do bullet point notes to fill in later….but I ended up typing full sentences and now that blog is nearly done.

So I opened another one, and boom, the words flew out of me. I opened this file, and I started writing, realizing that I had already hacked the way to find motivation.

To force it.

Sure, they say not to force yourself, but sometimes you are your own worse enemy and you DO need to force yourself. It isn’t depriving yourself of self care to do the things you need to do, sometimes DOING the hard work IS a form of self care.

Because I feel so much better for having done this much, and even though I have like seven more blogs to crank out, I think I can probably crank a few more out, or at least some notes for each one, so I can finish, fill out, and write, the entire list of blogs… and then start the next list. Because I have these blogs written, I will have THAT much more time to work on my creative writing and editing in Flake City, which helps me with my overall publishing goals for the year. Little things, little system tweaks, that allow me to achieve my goals.

For me, seeing it all listed out not only tells me “hey, you have shit to do” but it tells me WHAT to do, and I know to just DO a thing, to get myself moving.

This last part is key. Pick a thing. Easy thing, hard thing, top of the list, bottom of the list, pick a thing, and do it. Just fucking do it.

This isn’t a Nike commercial. Just do the damn thing…and when you finish it…keep going.

Now if you will excuse me, I have the next one to write.

Go do something productive.

Thanks for Reading!

❤️

Abbi