Let’s talk a bit about motivation! What about those times when you just have no desire to do the things you know you really need to? I have posted before about how life happens, and we need to cut ourselves some slack and all that jazz, but sometimes, the work still has to get done! What then?

How do you motivate yourself?

I have been tackling a HUGE project lately. I am still working on my crafting station, but behind that project is the desire to give everyone in the house a bit of their own space. So, the real underlying project is clearing out what used to be my craft room and turning it into a kid room, to separate the kids into their own rooms. This in turn will hopefully, end up with very little in the way of toys in any other part of the house. We currently have different types of toys for the kids on each level. Needless to say, this transition is huge. It means a lot of work…and to kick things off, it means me going through the nitty gritty of some of my “dumping zones” of the house.

The craft room used to be a room that I would just dump stuff in so that I could deal with it later. I could always close the door, if I needed to hide the room, and in reality, up until COVID, no one really used the room but me! But that means…there are tons of little papers, notes, and keepsakes mixed in with all of the crafting stuff. I also used it as a home office for a while, which means there is a bunch of office type stuff. Basically, it’s just a huge overwhelming mess of stuff! This craft room is really what needs to get sorted before the rest of the transition can happen.

And to think…this is progress! Despite my best efforts, I feel like I can’t find the bottom of this room…I have come a long way, but still have so far to go, and most of the time…

I just don’t wanna do it!

Often I find myself just sitting in the middle of the room, wishing it could just be done, magically!

It comes down to motivation!

How badly do I want it all done? Well, I want it done now! So that means that I need strategies to stay motivated to keep at it, despite feeling like I am getting no where!

I have a few tips if you find yourself overwhelmed with a big project.

First and foremost, set yourself a goal! You can take the time to set a SMART goal, or you can just pick a date! Use a calendar on the wall, or just use a piece of paper and write a date on it and stick it to the wall. Use time to keep a bit of pressure on your progress so that you have something to compete against. Tell the people in your house what your goal is, so they can help by either getting involved on the task, or staying out of your way (sometimes just keeping people out of the space is easier!).

Next, post something (I like to use the wall again) that reminds you of why you even want to do this huge-overwhelming-bottomless job! There will be many times that you just won’t want to do it, so a little reminder can go a LONG way! If the job you’re working on is kind of out of site out of mind, post your reminder somewhere that you will see it daily.

And lastly, visualize the end goal. It can be hard to imagine how the end will look while you are still knee deep in all the work, but the more you can visualize the more driven you’ll be. I keep picturing the kids, each in their own rooms, playing with their own stuff, having adult space in the rest of the house, being able to entertain while friend’s kids just retreat upstairs. Then in the evenings, or at different times of the day my husband or I can have some time on our own doing our own little projects of interest. I always try to visualize the optimistic part of life. I am sure, that the kids will fight over closed doors, or why one gets the bigger room, or even which toys belong to who and thus in which room, and my husband and I will probably have limited time to do anything that we actually WANT to do….but it’s all about living the dream right?

No matter how much or how little work is involved, or how long the timeline, finding ways to motivate yourself is critical to the success of the project. Taking away precious ‘now time’ for the sake of the future is such a hard balancing act. In the now, it’s way more fun to watch Netflix, or to chat with friends, or basically just ignore the big project to do ANYTHING else. But then it will likely make the day to day of the now frustrating. It will always be a project weighing you down. It’s best just to do whatever you can, little by little, to get it done.

Even if you just don’t wanna!

Thanks for coming home!