Simon Light . com

There are times when you may find yourself in a wonderful situation. For whatever reason, you suddenly have time and tools and a new found space to work on the dream project you’ve been itching to start. You roll up your sleeves to dig in and get it off the ground…. but you just don’t. Instead of starting the project you find yourself cleaning the counter, taking a nap, checking your email, surfing the web, anything but working on the project. And it’s driving you crazy.

You know you want to do it, but you don’t. What gives?

If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, there’s a simple way out. All it takes is a little external motivation and anyone can purchase that motivation for just a few dollars.

Default motivation

We are introduced into a world of external motivation. From kindergarten all the way to our working lives, we are doing things for others: Homework, bills, our professional duties, you name it. Not only are these all coming at us from others, but the requestor is looking over our shoulder to make sure it’s getting done. If your homework isn’t done, you get a bad grade. If the bill isn’t paid, your electric is shut off. If you don’t finish your work assignment, you’ll be replaced with someone who will….

That’s how most things get done in our world. Someone requests it of you, then they look over your shoulder until it gets done. I don’t find it a very agreeable way of working, but it is a very effective way of getting others to do things.

Now enter your dream project into this environment. You want to do it, but you just don’t. You find you don’t have the motivation to do it. You know the desire is there, but it’s just not happening. Why? In most cases, it’s because there’s no one “looking over your shoulder”. You are getting no external motivation and you’ve been habituated to external motivation over so many years.

There’s a better way. It’s internal motivation. Instead of being driven by fear, internal motivation is driven by freedom and attainment. The external is energized by a fear of consequences. The internal is energized by a desire for the results.

External motivation -> fear of consequences -> performance

Internal motivation -> joy of attainment -> performance

If you want to create your own life, you’ll need to strengthen your internal motivation and weaken the external motivation.

Enter the egg timer

I found myself in just such a situation some years ago. After many years of working in technology, I suddenly found myself without a job, but with a nice chunk of money, lots of free time and a wonderful idea for a software company I wanted to create.

Filled with energy, I rolled up my sleeves, sat down to work… and began surfing the web, taking naps, cleaning the counter, and checking my email… not much got done, but a clean inbox and kitchen counter.

After an infuriating amount of time repeating this cycle, I came across the time management concept of time boxing and decided to give it a try. The idea is to have a segment of time where you do nothing but a single task (or a list of tasks done one after the other). When the time is up, you’re free to stop what your doing and do something else.

It’s a simple but effective way of giving yourself some external motivation to actually accomplish things, while at the same time weaning you off the nasty habit of relying on others for your motivation and direction in life. All it takes is an egg timer and the following:

1) Know exactly what you are going to do during your block of time. Make a list of clearly defined tasks and order them by importance.
2) Set the egg timer. Start smaller rather than larger, you can always do more, but it can be frustrating to push yourself through a time box you made that is just too long.
3) Work down the list of tasks. Do only one task at a time until it’s completed, then move to the next task on your list. Do this until the egg timer rings.

It’s so simple that it may seem absurd, but it is very effective for motivation. After getting comfortable with this, you’ll find yourself ending a productive time box wanting to reset the timer and do some more. If that’s what happens, go ahead and do it. After using the egg timer for weeks or months, you’ll find you don’t even need it anymore - that’s when you know your motivational strategy flipped from the external to the internal.