Improve your personal accountability

It means believing in your ability to perform a task and achieve goals. There are 3 ways to build self-efficacy:

• Ensure early success. When first starting out, choose activities you're certain you can do successfully.
• Watch others succeed in the activity you want to try.  This is particularly effective if the person you're observing is similar to you (friends, neighbors, co-workers).
• Find a supportive voice. Personal trainers and coaches are skilled in giving appropriate encouragement, as are good friends (usually).

A fundamentally independent thinker understands that nothing makes a person upset, angry, or depressed; rather, what a person thinks about the world determines how they feel. 

Procrastination gives you a break which is a good thing for your brain. 

If you become distracted, it can be your brain’s signals that you should have a break. However, if you procrastinate all the time and don’t accomplish your daily tasks, it means that you should change something.

A new place makes your brain work in a fresh way and you’ll achieve the necessary results faster.

Our brain can get used to a routine, even to places and you work on autopilot. Of course, you’ll accomplish your tasks but they will not be creative. 

As you’re determining the habits or resolutions you’re trying to set, make the habit part of a bigger cause that’s worth the struggle.

You’re not just going to the gym, you’re building a new body that you’re not ashamed of so you can start dating again.

There are 3 parts to a good or bad habit: Cue (what triggers the action), Routine (the action itself), Reward (the positive result because of the action).

Compare that to a cue (you see your running shoes), anticipate a reward (a runner’s high), and make the behavior automatic (go for a run!).

The things that give us deep happiness are inherently things that take longer and have a big element of meaning in them.

And if the task you have to do doesn’t seem meaningful, try reframing your experience. You might not be able to change what you have to do but you can change how you see it.

When we feel connected to what we’re doing, when we make something our own, we’re much more motivated.

To turn some task you’re handed at the office into something you feel ownership of, make small tweaks that customize what you have to do, that allow you to do it your way.

Motivation is often the result of action, not the cause of it. Getting started, even in very small ways, is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum.

Newton’s First Law applied to habit formation: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. 

Once a task has begun, it is easier to continue moving it forward. In other words, it is often easier to finish a task than it was to start it in the first place.

Have you ever had a looming deadline on a big project only to spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning out your refrigerator or detailing your car?

If you struggle to get started on a project until it’s crunch time, you might have an unhealthy relationship with stress. Research shows that people can be just as addicted to stress as they are to likes on their social media posts.

You can accomplish quite a bit in just 15 minutes, and yet most of us fritter away that time on our phones in between meetings or during a commute. 

Commit to working on a put-off task for 15 minutes without interruption. Stop at 15 minutes. Don’t allow yourself to work any longer. Do this every day for a week and mark your progress.

The 3 elements required for intrinsic motivation:

• Autonomy: it's about choice - when you believe you have a choice, you're more motivated.
• Mastery: it's about wanting to get better at something that matters.
• Purpose: it comes from believing you're working on something that's bigger than yourself.

When we know that our work will make a difference to someone else, it makes us work harder. 

Try to reach out to the people who directly benefit from your work. This could boost your motivation to work hard.