The Motivation Machine: How to Get & Stay Motivated for Any Goal - Nat Eliason

Increasing the reasons to start a project deals with the top of the motivation equation: Expectancy and Value. We have to create ways to dramatically increase the Value of starting the project now, as well as increase our Expectancy of succeeding.

The easiest way to increase the value of starting a project is to clearly define what outcome you will get by accomplishing the goal . If your goals aren't motivating, you may not have attached a sufficiently high value to them.

If you only want to learn Spanish because you feel like you should learn a second language, you're unlikely to see high enough Value in it. But if you have a reason like "I spend at least a month each year in Spanish speaking places and I want to be able to make friends when I'm there," you have a much stronger value.

To make it more effective, though, assign a date to complete it by . "Finish the first three exercises" isn't particularly urgent, but "finish the first three exercises by Friday" is. There are two competing philosophies for how to best do this:

The Parkinson's Law Philosophy : The Parkinson's Law philosophy says that you should set an artificially short deadline so you don't waste time dilly-dallying on unimportant things. It says that by giving yourself a smaller window to complete the task in, you'll be more likely to get it done efficiently , since "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."